Thanks everyone for this latest informative discussion. Just a few words to add.
I'm happy to see the positive feedback on the Fidex debit card. This is something we have worked particularly hard on over the last couple of years. We have a very good and close working relationship with Loyal Bank who have proven excellent and reliable during this time. I know our cards are not the cheapest out there, and we have occasional administrative glitches like everyone else, but I believe we now have the longest running e-gold fundable debit card program. We have built it up steadily over a couple of years and have established a very secure base. The few times we have had problems, the bank came to us to discuss how to solve them. We have regular personal meetings with the bank, and we have the direct email and cellular phone number of the President. Our bank does *not* just cancel or block all our cards, as some banks particularly in Latvia and the USA have done to other exchangers. In all these cases, the banks somehow irresponsibly issued cards outside the terms of their Mastercard licences. Then they were forced to cancel and recall the cards. This happened with Parex, Lateko, Chexcard, Netspend, E-Count and others. American Express even ran a prepaid card trial and then withdrew it. It will continue to happen with banks which are new to this business. We would like to issue Mastercards or Visa cards but for the moment we see no way of doing so. We are constantly monitoring the situation. All of these programs are currently unstable IMO. I have no personal experience with E-Bullion's but it seems to be the only one that works reliably and it is only available to US residents. Many of the so-called Visa cards which people are plugging are not proper Visa cards even though they bear a Visa logo. They are Visa cash cards which work on the Plus ATM network amongst others. They do *not* work in merchants which accept only normal Visa cards, and neither do they work for internet transactions at merchants which claim to accept Visa. If you are considering buying such a card, you should be very clear in advance on what you are ordering. We have Visa themselves to thank for creating this confusion. The only Visa product we currently have available is the VIRTUAL VISA CARD which we set up on request for our existing clients. This is fundable by e-gold and should work at all merchants that accept Visa cards, with the possible exception of some in the USA which will only accept cards which pass the AVS (address verification) test. That effectively means they only accept cards issued by US banks with billing addresses in the USA. Maestro (the card we issue) is Mastercard's "Electronic use only" card, equivalent to Visa's Electron brand. It is a product we are very happy promoting. If only Mastercard would get in gear and make it more acceptable in the USA and on the internet, then it would be the perfect product. This is something they are doing and hopefully it won't take too long. Apart from the USA, it works very nicely worldwide in both merchants and ATMs. In summary if you are looking for a card to use mainly in the USA, then based on recent recommendations E-Bullion's sounds the best. For the rest of the world, I can honestly recommend our card which is available at http://e-fidex.com If anyone needs more sophisticated banking services we are very happy to advise on and introduce you to reliable, friendly bankers. We have recently set up a subsidiary, Magnum Worldwide, which does just that and it can be found at http://www.fastbankaccounts.com Anyone interested is also welcome to contact me via [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Regards Nick Scott Marketing Director - European Representative Office Fidex Financial Services Group http://www.e-fidex.com --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
