Video game maker Capcom has partnered with Visa to offer a pre-paid debit card with so many fees that it will shrink your wallet from an E. Honda to a Dhalsim. The hurricane kick of fees, inside.
From the card’s fee page:
- $9.95 activation fee
- $4.95 monthly fee
- $0.25 per debit use
- $1.50 per ATM withdrawal (not including whatever fee the ATM charges)
- $10 to close the card (and you can’t just stop using it, because besides the $4.95 monthly fee, there’s a $5 dormancy fee
There’s also assorted fees for declined transactions, overdrafts, and cash advances (which we didn’t think could exist with a pre-paid debit card). On the other hand, you can have a Visa card with Ryu on it.
Know the rules of the game before taking Capcom card [Defend Your Dollars]
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Sweet, a fee to use a service that most banks offer for basically free? That makes good business sense, it’s only lacking in the basic consumer incentive that would make me rush out to get one.
Bad Capcom, bad! *hits with rolled up newspaper*
@Stoli: Funny thing- they’ve not offered this in their home market. The first thing they’ve ever done in the US before their home market. Not that this is something to be proud of… *also rolls up a newspaper and starts hitting*
This has got to be the best article summary ever. At least for this year.
Let me get this straight: I have to PAY to NOT use the card?
Dear lord I hope no other card companies decide to use this business model.
You forgot the fee fee and the fee fee fee.
@Canino:
fee fi fo fum?
@Canino: I’m sure that things like shipping, filing, paper use fee, training, licensing, forwarding, memory, etc. So for every hundred dollars put on the card, you get to spend about $12, and it has to on capcom stuff or there is a competitor fee also.
@Canino: Yo dawg we heard you like fees! So we put a fee on your fee so you can pay while you pay!
You can buy a regular visa gift card with an activation fee of $5.95. I use them for online purchases because I’m paranoid and its worth $5.95 for my piece of mind. You can get up to $500 on the one’s I have seen.
@Rhyss: Paypal also offers this for free via the “PayPal Plug-In”… generate Mastercard numbers for single-use or multiple-use, with the idea being that you can then use Paypal on sites which only accept credit cards. I don’t actually have the plug-in installed on my browser, but if you log in to Paypal and click the Paypal Plug-in link on the left, you can generate the card number without using the actual plug-in.
@Rhyss: You need to junk the visa gift card and get a real credit card if you can. Most of them have no fees (unless you miss a payment) and many of them offer rewards and cash back. Most importantly, you’re only liable for $50 on fraudulent transactions, and the reality is that most reputable banks will not hold you liable for anything if it’s reported in a timely fashion. $5.95 doesn’t seem like much money, but in my opinion, no one should ever have to pay for the privilege of using their own money.
Now your wallet will know what it’s like to get a shoryuken in the face.
@JollyJumjuck:
Took the words right out of my mouth!
I need to start a card like that to cater to the people that are stockpiling guns and survival supplies because Jim Cramer and Fox News say we are going to devolve into post-apocalyptic chaos and a revolution right now.
Anyone silly enough to believe that would be all over a debit card like the Capcom one.
@bohemian: No, purchasing a worthless piece of plastic doesn’t appeal to someone who would rather drive the price of gold sky high.
I think ammunition is a much better place for the money than artificially high gold myself.
@bohemian: What is so far fetched about stocking survival supplies? Face it, the economy is tanking and is MUCH worse than what is being reported in mainstream news. Many Americans are going to blindly wake up one day and not know how they are going to make it.
@mbz32190: What news source are you reading that’s showing it as much worse that what is being reported? I’m not goading you, I actually want to know. Just please don’t say infowars or prisonplanet.
I wonder if anyone will actually buy these?
Apparently no one was trying to hide their evil when they came out with this. It’s like Satans card.
Friends and I used to joke about charging our pain-in-the ass clients random pain-in-the-ass fees; day-after-drinking-binge-heckling fees and the Tuesday fee were two that came to mind. There were many more, but due to that first fee I can’t remember the others.
Memory-loss fee! (Profitable and since I can’t remember why I charged it and you don’t remember asking for it, you can’t have it reversed. I mean, just because you don’t recall asking for a service doesn’t mean you didn’t right? Right? Hello?….)
I got this offer in an e-mail yesterday (since I’ve bought from Capcom online). I didn’t bother looking up all the fees, because once I saw it cost $10 just to sign up, I hit the delete key.
But wow! What a deal!
I was at Safeway yesterday an a woman purchased 4 pre-paid Visa debit cards in line in front of me, grand total a little under $1400. Each card had an activation fee of $9.95 added so there appears to be market for these type of cards with or without Ryu on it. As always, cash is always appreciated as a gift, at least for me.
@Cat_In_A_Hat: I’ve seen people purchase a bunch of these too. I really don’t see the purpose unless you are doing some kind of money laundering scheme.
@mbz32190:
Bad/no credit and a need to buy things with a credit card. Eg: Online purchases.
Before you suggest someone in that state shouldn’t be buying stuff, consider someone underwater on their mortgage, or severely in debt with a good job. Once they foreclose/go bankrupt, it won’t take long before they have a strongly positive cashflow (usually 9 monts, maybe 21 months where I am). If they learned their lesson about credit, buying things online with a pre-paid credit card is probably the smartest thing they’ve done.
For these people, spending $6 in fees means they don’t end up with more credit, which they know they aren’t (yet) responsible enough to have.
I think most of us that are old enough to understand the character references that Alex makes are also old enough to stay away from this card.
And I used Ken. And I sucked.
@Mike8813:
Dhalsim was the only good one for me. He was so stretchy he could kick ass before the other characters got anywhere near him!
is there a convenience fee?
@Canino And the Fee Fi Fo Fum Fee.
If you feel a compelling need to have some fightan gaems on your credit card, you should check out Zug.
Wow…can’t wait to see the idiots start lining up for this then complaining later.
(Eddie Murphy’s Chinese voice)
Nih-nihtee Fih, what ah bahgain!
@ Stream of Consciousness:
Yep, and then wait for when the FEDS bail them all out.
Ryu woould not approve of this….. They should have used M. Bison instead. there you go: make it the official Shadooloo card, lol.
where can i get one of those? am very interested….
@antoineawwad: I don’t know, but if you send me 1300 bucks I’ll send you a check for $100 per month for a year. It’s like free money!
What do you call a forum insult levied by a practitioner of eastern meditation?
A Yoga Flame.
Yo dawg I heard you like credit card fees so we created a credit fee that racks up fees while your using/not using your credit card and gaining fees.
Gamers have long been known to spend extreme amounts of money to have the fastest computer, best monitor, newest controller, etc. Apparently some companies confuse being competitive or having the need to have the fastest technology with being a complete idiot.
Visa = Akuma? D:?
This is worse than a “Green Dot” card. My wife, a teacher, received a “Green Dot” Visa as a gift instead of a typical Visa or Amex gift card. If I recall correctly, it had a $4.95 monthly fee as well, but we figured we’d just bite the bullet and use it to buy an Amazon gift cert immediately after we activated it. When I called to activate it, they wanted a SSN. I didn’t like that idea – they claimed it was Patriot Act sort of thing because it was a “financial instrument.” (I think perhaps because it’s a reloadable card, unlike a standard Visa, Mastercard, Amex, or Discover gift card.) Unbelievably, I was able to “opt out.” By not activating the card, we did not incur the $4.95 monthly fee, did not have to give our SSN, and they issued us a check for the full value of the card PLUS the $9.95 purchase fee the the gift-giver had paid. Brilliant!
It may be my browser but on the card agreement page of the sign up process most of the agreement in the second box there is black text on a black background. When you highlight it to view it, you can see all the fees and charges and your agreement to go thru arbitration (we already know about arbitration from another consumerist article). This business needs to get shut down. It’s downright misleading. In the FAQ, it says there is no “oops” fees or overdraft fees but in the fees, it says there is.
Too bad it’s not Mortal Kombat- I think this deserves a “fatality.”
The best prepaid card I’ve ever heard of is Wired Visa. I got one back when my credit was so bad I couldn’t even get a checking account. Now my credit is tons better (just financed a Chevy Suburban), but I still keep it in my wallet just in case.
@Rhyss – Paypal is who I worry about. Back when SWMBO & I still sold on E-bay they stole several hundred $ out out our debit account because someone whom had purchased from us months before had later screwed them. Trying to get our money back was a nightmare We finally just gave up and wrote it off. Thank goodness that I was already paranoid and have an account for use on the internet. I never put more in it than I can afford to lose.
From the original article, there’s a 15% discount on the Capcom online store. A smart min/maxing consumer might be able to eke a small total savings out of this card if the discounts end up worth more than the initial fee and they avoid all other charges.
Thanks for the post and letting us know to avoid this. But as any capitalist is allowed to do as he wishes and try to exploit ignorance. Even though i disprove of it.
Website cardholder account inquiries – Waived
Oh, well, that’s really generous of them… I can check the balance online and they’ll “waive” whatever fee they would have liked to have charged.
@ bohemian
Jim Cramer and Fox News say we are going to devolve into post-apocalyptic chaos and a revolution right now.
Which is exactly why it will NOT happen… those guys are idiots.
As a gun stockpiling conspiracy theorist, I believe that things aren’t as terrible as some people would like you to believe–and that the average republican in the public view would LOVE for things to continue to tank on Obama’s watch, it’s like a 2-for-1 for them, you scare the sheep into hating a Democrat AND a black person, bonus!
Whatever Jim says, it’s like hearing “that guy” at office, you know the one who always had a huge food stain on the front of his shirt?, yammering on about what new investment he just bought or business he just started and he’s going to be rich by next October.
…well as long as it helps our credit score…
That is insanity!
Good gravy does it at least include free play on all Capcom arcade machines?
Otherwise someone needs a taste of the old E. Honda “Slap Attack.”
I can just hear the CEO of VISA now:
“FINISH HIM”
as they suck the last pennies out of the debt car via fees and the poor husk of a user is turned to dust.
Then the late fee penalties kick-in….mwahahahahahah.
Dare I say… Ha-D’OH-ken!
YOGA FLAAAMMMMEE
Boycott! I’d rather have the cash then the card, I mean they should not have these fees…they are lucky that people will use these cards in the first place with the economic climate at the moment.
This is normal for most prepaid cards. National City had one a few years back that had pretty much the same terms.
Also, you couldn’t use it “Anywhere VISA is accepted” like they claimed. I tried to use it to sign up for an online game and since they don’t keep your address on file, it didn’t go through.
Granted, it was a visa gift card, but they still advertised it as being accepted anywhere Visa is.