1 Islamic articles on: debit cards

Table of contents for the topic debit cards
  1. Are virtual credit cards halal?

IslamQA: Are virtual credit cards halal?

Salaam. I was planning to create a PayPal account, but I'm unemployed, have no credit card, and thought of creating a VCC or Virtual Credit Card to get a full access to PayPal and to make overseas online payment or transfer. Unfortunately, the VCC service asks their users to take up 1,9% to 4,5% from users' account balance. Does this count as usury? If so, I will undo this.

Since it is called a credit card and since a percentage is mentioned, it seems likely that it involves usury. Try to find services that offer debit cards rather than credit cards. Debit cards do not involve usury. You can go to a bank that offers VISA or MasterCard payment cards and open a checking (rather than savings, which involves usury) bank account with them, and first make sure their cards will work online.

Another way to pay with PayPal without having a bank account is to use prepaid gift cards (here is the PayPal page about it). You can buy a prepaid gift card at most Western supermarkets. Make sure they have a MasterCard, VISA, American Express or Discover logo on them. You can them use the prepaid gift card during checkout in PayPal. But I do not know if you can use them to transfer money to others.

If you ever have an urgent need for money in your PayPal account, let me know and I will try to help you.