Green Dot® Gold PrePaid Visa®

From the CompareCards.com Editorial Team:

The Green Dot Gold Prepaid Visa card gives you the convenience and prestige of carrying a real Visa card that is accepted all over the planet, but you don’t have to have good credit to get this card. There is, in fact, no credit check whatsoever, there are no overdraft penalty fees, and even if you have terrible credit you can still qualify for this prepaid Visa.

You can also earn a one-time-only $10 credit within five business days to the card that receives the first direct deposit of $250 or more from an employer or a government agency. There is normally a $4.95 activation charge to open your Green Dot Gold Prepaid card account, but you may qualify to have that charge waived through a “free” activation offer from the company. There is also a Green Dot sweepstakes you can enter to win up to $5,000.

The downside of prepaid cards, however, is that they require that you place a cash deposit into your card account. This deposit becomes your line of credit or collateral against future purchases – which is why they call it “prepaid” – and once you use it up you have to deposit more in order to continue using the card. But you can use the free direct deposit and online bill pay features and can load your card with more cash at more than 50,000 different retail locations.

If you do foreign transactions there is an additional 3% surcharge. There is a monthly service charge of $5.95. But the monthly charges will be waived in any monthly billing cycle when you load at least $1000 to your card or have 30 posted purchase transactions – not including certain ATM transactions or online bill payments and cash advances. You can use in-network ATMs to make withdrawals without a charge.

The Bottom-Line
You get a real Visa card, without a credit check, no matter how bad your credit may be. This is a prepaid card but you can get perks like free activation and a chance to enter a sweepstakes, plus the monthly service charges will be waived is you post enough activity or deposit enough cash into the account each month. There are miscellaneous fees as with any prepaid card, but the ones on this card are less than on many competitor prepaid cards.

The Good
You can get this card regardless of your credit, and it is accepted anywhere that Visa is accepted.

The Not So Good
This is a prepaid card so you have to deposit cash before using it, and there are several kinds of activity fees for monthly maintenance or certain types of transactions.