Banco Sol Kumbu prepaid review

Banco Sol Kumbu is a prepaid card issued by Banco Sol, S.A., a bank headquartered in Angola. Money is added to the card before it is spent, so the balance only ever holds what has been loaded. The card is listed for travel rather than for day to day banking.

The conversion fee is 3%, above the prepaid median of 0.5% and above the site median of 1%. If you load the currency of the country you are visiting and pay in that currency, the fee never applies. It bites when a balance is held in a single currency and spent in another.

Loading at a branch counter adds a percentage charge plus VAT to the amount you put in, so every top-up costs more than the figure you hand over. Because the charge scales with the amount, frequent small loads add up faster than a single larger one. Any spend in a second currency then attracts 3% as well.

The card runs on mastercard, the network behind 38.5% of the cards on the site, which makes it the most widely used network in this comparison set. A wide network says nothing about the cost of conversion, and the fee here is 3%.

Support runs on email, phone and help centre, so a phone call or an email reaches the bank directly, with no live chat listed. For a prepaid card, checking the balance and recent loads before a trip is the main reason to get in touch, and a blocked or declined payment is the other.

The card is listed for travel, which fits a trip where you load money and pay in the currency of the country you are in. It runs on mastercard and is a prepaid card, so it works across borders. The conversion fee of 3% makes it a poor fit for a trip that spans several currencies.

Beyon Money converts at 0% and BFC Pay at 0%, both below the 3% charged here, while Skrill lists 3.99%. Where spending happens mostly in the currency you loaded, the difference matters less, but on a second currency the cheaper conversion fees win.