CMF review

The monthly fee is $0 on the prepaid account, so keeping the card open costs you nothing on its own. What you pay comes from currency conversion and from card spending, not from a subscription you have to renew.

Currency conversion fees run 0% to 3%, so the rate on a conversion depends on which band your transaction lands in. Worth weighing if you pay in another currency often, since the charge lands on each conversion rather than once a month.

Yes. A virtual card sits among the features of the prepaid card, so you can add one for online shopping without waiting for a card to arrive. It runs on the mastercard network, so it works anywhere that network is accepted.

You can pay or top up at partner merchants free of charge. Each top up carries a small fraud insurance charge with a minimum amount, so frequent small top ups cost proportionally more than topping up in larger amounts less often.

Support runs through email, chat and phone, so a person is reachable by phone or chat as well as in writing. A help centre sits in the same list, which is handy when you want to check a fee before spending.

It is a prepaid card, so you spend from a balance you have loaded rather than drawing on a current account. That suits planned spending, since the balance has to be there before the purchase goes through.

The card is issued by CMF Financiera, S.A., which sits in Panama. It is a Panama product, so a customer living elsewhere would be looking at a different card and a different set of fees.

Protection comes as a small fraud insurance charge on each top up, with a minimum amount per top up. It sits on the top up itself rather than on the balance you carry, so keep loaded funds modest and size each top up for the spending you have coming.