Up until about a year ago, it seemed as though banking was a highly complex matter carried out by skilled experts. But then the economy went down the toilet and it became clear that any idiot could do it -- and in fact they were. Heck, they'll even let teenagers have a crack at it these days. O2 has obviously thought, "Hang on, we could do that," and is entering the financial services market with O2 Money.
O2 is taking care of the technical side while NatWest does the financial bits on two pre-pay Visa cards to be offered to the phone company's customers, called Cash Manager and Load & Go. After every transaction, cardholders will get a free text message displaying the card's balance. You'll also be able to manage the cards online.
Load & Go is aimed at teenagers, with parents informed of the card's use and certain functions blocked, such as online gambling. Both cards are pre-paid, which means you stick money on there in advance at O2 stores, PayPoint and e-pay outlets. It's like the old envelope trick of setting aside certain amounts of cash each week to help you budget. Because there's no credit involved, there's no interest.
If you're interested in using technology to help manage your wonga, take a look at these money-managing ideas. Right, we're off to set up Bank of CNET: we give ourselves credit we can't afford to buy our favourite gadgets and then award ourselves massive bonuses. What could possibly go wrong?
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Anonymous 1 September, 2010 13:43
You are totally right mate! i am 16 and applied for this card a few weeks ago, i thought it was the best card ever at first, because i could use it online as it was a visa.. when the card arrived it said in the letter the pin number would be recieved in the next 10 days. I wasn't to bothered and waited until it became 2 weeks! so i phoned up o2 money on 10202 and asked why i hadn't recieved it and they said they got the pin number returned and i asked them why and they said because the address was wrong! Even though they had managed to send the card :@ they said they would sent it out again and recieve it in the next few days. I recieved it 9 days later, but was happy that i had it all working. A week later i asked my dad to load some money on, so we went onto load money on card and it said "denied this card has been blocked" i was getting all frustrated when my dad said he would try ringing them. They asked for the account number and then said all this stupid stuff about me not reaching the criteria, without telling me why and then said my card has now been blocked and i will not be able to use it ever again! I'm also not allowed to apply for another one for 6 months! they closed it like you said, WITHOUT WARNING!!! THEY ARE THE WORST COMPANY EVER!!!! :@