M-PESA GlobalPay review

Conversion costs 3.5% on the card, and there is no lower tier in the account terms. That sits above the 1% site median and well above the 0.1% charged by Wise, so the fee is the first thing to check before you load the card for a trip.

It is a virtual card, listed under the virtual type and sold for travel use. Nothing physical is posted, and nothing physical means there is no card for cash withdrawals or for taps on terminals that expect a chip.

The card comes from Safaricom PLC, which is headquartered in Kenya and has been operating since 1997. The account sits under the Central Bank of Kenya, so the provider and the account are regulated on the same side of the market.

M-PESA GlobalPay runs on the visa network, the most common one on the comparison site at 58.6%. Merchant acceptance abroad follows that network, so a virtual card on it can be used wherever Visa is taken.

Support runs through phone, help centre and community, which covers phone, a help centre and a community space. There is no email or live chat listed, so a card blocked abroad is quicker to sort by phone while you are still in the country using it.

The card is listed for travel as one of its virtual card and travel features, and that is the reason it exists: spending on a trip without a physical card. The catch is the conversion fee of 3.5%, which is applied to the foreign currency spend.

No, cost is where it loses. The conversion fee of 3.5% compares with 0% at Bitpanda and 0% at Starling Personal Account Debit Card, so heavier overseas spending costs more here than on those cards.

A virtual card such as M-PESA GlobalPay is held in an app rather than as a physical object, which suits online and travel spending. A debit card, like Starling Personal Account Debit Card, also works in ATMs, and a virtual card has nothing to insert there.