Avoid the Ryanair Credit Card Charge

Last year i wrote a post on bypassing the ryanair credit card charge. Assuming two people were flying on a return trip with ryanair, that saved €20 in total (€5 per person, per leg). A lot of the time, that credit card fee would actually have cost more than the flight

Towards the end of the year (2009) however, Ryanair made an announcement that they would now be adding a fee to flights booked by visa electron cards (up until now, they were the only type of card that was free to use). It wasn’t quite all bad news though, as they did say prepaid mastercard cards would now have no fee attached to them. So the question you’ll be asking is where the hell do you get a prepaid mastercard card?

Well, fortunately enough, entropay (the company which provided virtual visa electron cards) has now made available prepaid mastercards to customers. The card costs £4.99. I got mine last month and can confirm it works and works just like a normal credit card (you can use it in atms, shops etc..).

You can transfer funds from your existing visa electron card for a flat fee of 15c. For those of you that are new to entropay, you must first sign up for a virtual visa electron card, then apply for a prepaid mastercard.

To top up your prepaid mastercard, you’ll have to top up your main entropay account (which involves a loading charge of 4.95% – as far as i know there is no minimum loading charge) and then transfer funds from it on to your prepaid mastercard (at a flat rate of 15c).

So lets put his in to action with an example….

I decide to book a flight for myself & girlfriend to london. It costs €100 in total, including taxes. When i go to check out, €5 x 4 credit card fee will be charged if i use a credit card (€5 pp, per leg). So that brings the total to €120.

Now lets say i sign up to entrocard and use their new prepaid mastercard card (which costs roughly €6) to avoid the €20 ryanair fee. In order to pay for the €100 flights, i would need to top up my account by €100. However, that would cost me €104.95 (with the 4.95% loading fee entropay have). Add on the intial €6 to buy the card, plus the 15c fee to transfer funds from my entropay account on to it and i’d end up paying €111.10.

I’d be paying €120 if i were to use a normal credit card. And the prepaid mastercard is a one off fee, so if i want to book more flights, i’m just charged 4.95% + 15c -v- €5 per person per leg.

Obviously the greater the price of the flight, the less of a ‘bargain’ this becomes. If the flight costed €300, it would cost me €314.85 to load my entropay account (with that 4.95% loading fee), plus 15c to transfer that to my prepaid mastercard. Plus €6 to buy the card. So i would end up paying €321 -v- €320 by using a normal credit card.

The only reason i’m blogging about this is because my old post on this topic is still getting a lot of traffic & comments, so it makes sense that i update it and let people know the ‘new’ method of bypassing the ryanair credit card charge.