I use a pre-pay card for a lot of online purchases.

This is one card I use. Nothing to do with Apple – I just took the pic on the top of my Macbook lid.

There are loads to choose from out there depending on where you live and what you do online.

Not the big stuff or for business use, but for purchases where I prefer to do damage limitation should anything go awry.

For example:

1. Letting the kids buy apps, films and games for their tablets. They’re good kids and totally trustworthy but sometimes in-app purchases and play store / istore purchases can be a bit deceptive and not clear as to what is being bought. Having a pre-paid card for these means they can only spend what’s on the card

2. Offers from various online companies, internet marketers and trial purchases. I use my pre-paid cards to enrol in 30 day trials, $1 offers and the like, some of which can be notoriously hard to cancel. If they make me jump through hoops to cancel a trial, or worse, if they’re downright dodgy they can’t keep billing my card if there’s no credit to bill

3. Ordering on internet sites where something flags up as being slightly dodgy. Usually I’m wrong and I have to say that over the years of using credit and debit cards on the internet (and I use them a LOT) I’ve only to date had ONE instance of someone using my credit card details. They bought a number of computers before I sussed it out and the bank cancelled my card. It was a lot of hassle getting the money back though.

So I’m a big fan of pre-paid cards where you can just fund (for example) a couple of hundred quid to it from your bank account at the start of the month and if something goes wrong that’s ALL you can lose. I’m not saying it’s a nice thing, but I’d rather do that than someone get access to a credit card with a limit of thousands.

•