There’s no doubt that there are many great value deals offered online, but it’s worth noting that consumers need to be careful. Card fraud cost the UK £610m in 2009, and over 75% of all offences involved the internet, phone or mail order transactions*.

Or looking at it another way, around one out of every five people using online shopping have been victims of fraud, according to a YouGov survey†. According to research commissioned by eWise payo, 88% of online shoppers have been hit by cyber criminals or are worried that they will be defrauded in the future†.

One of the best solutions to online fraud is to use a prepaid card [Link to: http://www.mycashplus.co.uk/] when making purchases or paying for services and subscriptions online. That’s because with a prepaid card, the risk to the cardholder’s money is limited to what has beenthey’ve loaded onto the card. So for example, if a customer tops up the card with £100 and he or shethey becomes the victim of an online card fraud, that’s the most the customer will expose. And with secure access to their transaction information 24/7 online, any suspicious activity can quickly be spotted by the cardholders.

But when an online shopper reveals their credit card’s details online, they could be exposing their entire credit limit to fraud. Although credit card users are generally protected under the Payment Services Regulations, it’s easy to imagine the hassle involved in resolving the card’s account, and having to separate genuine transactions from fraudulent ones.

And with a debit account, the disruption that fraudulent card use could cause could be even more serious – missing payments for everything from a mobile phone contract to a mortgage could have huge consequences, especially if the account involved has a large overdraft facility.

This compares with Cashplus prepaid Gold MasterCard® customers, who can minimise their risk even further, with their card’s valuable Free Purchase Protection benefit. This is designed to help the customer if the goods purchased aren’t received, are faulty, the company goes bust before the goods or services are received, or a website turns out to be ‘dodgy’.

In other words, the chances are that with a prepaid card, the customer could have their money replaced as long as they’ve been using the card safely. In fact, Cashplus card holders have already had tens of thousands of pounds refunded.

So if you’re looking to take advantage of the excellent online offers but don’t want to risk exposing your credit or debit card details, using a prepaid card makes a lot of sense.