My experience shopping on Amazon with a Naira visa card

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Posted by Felix Okoli on Tuesday March 5, 2013 at 7:58:35:

I'm normally used to shopping online at Amazon stores from Nigeria by using a Nigerian bank issued USD prepaid card and both the Mastercard and Visa do work fine as long as there are enough funds in them.

Getting a prepaid USD card from a bank and using it has a lot of fees attached to it but the only advantage is that you can negotiate you own exchange rate for the dollar. Using your usd card comes with a loading fee, transaction fee as well as the fact that you have to source for your own foreign currency yourself as banks don't sell that to you.

Lately, I've become interested in using naira visa cards online. These are debit cards that are normally usable on ATMs which your bank normally issues you that are linked to your bank accounts in naira and carry a Visa logo.

Yes, most of these ATM cards now used in Nigeria do carry either a Visa or mastercard logo unlike in the old days when they either carry an interswitch or verve logo. Having a Visa or mastercard brand attached to it means that one can use them globally at more stores unlike the old atm cards that were restricted to stores in Nigeria.

So, one of the things that attracted me to the naira cards was the issue of not needing to source for dollars to fund a USD visa card.

I decided to use one of the visa cards I've been issued by Union bank since it carries a Visa card. This was a card attached to my savings account and for use on ATMs.

How I used my Union bank Visa card online
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- I located a Union bank ATM
- Entered the visa naira card
- Entered my 4 DIGIT PIN
- Selected the change pin option
- Pressed the i-pin button
- Entered a new pin
- Now the visa card was activated to be used for online shopping
- Visited Amazon.com and was interested in buying casio watches
- Selected a product and clicked to checkout
- Chose a new credit card to pay with apart from my old usd visa card
- Entered the 16 digit Visa card from Union bank
- Entered other details like expiry date, name on card and billing address
- Placed the order

Foreign currency Conversion rates for a naira visa card
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One things I noticed with shopping online with a naira visa card was that the currency exchange rates were normally higher than usual as when I made an order for a product worth $9.99, I received an alert on my phone that my savings account had been debited with N1776.8 and this means that I got $1 at a rate of about N178 even though the usual rate is about N157 - That's like a rip off of about N21. I guess the USD card does have some advantages too.

Any benefits with using a Naira visa card on USD stores?
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- You don't have to source for foreign currency
- You can spend it anywhere in the world where visa is accepted
- It is linked to your bank account
- You can get soft loans with a naira credit card account

Personally, I don't mind using a naira visa card for most of my online transactions but the only pull back is the unusually high exchange rates by banks when using a naira card on a foreign currency transaction. It should have been pegged at the official rates.

Comments:
Re: My experience shopping on Amazon with a Naira visa card Posted by Amen on Saturday March 9, 2013 at 14:59:52:

Wat do u mean by I-pin? Wa billing address can i use? Forigen or nigerian? Dis cose amazon has bin constantly rejecting ma nigerian billing address. Dey say they are sorry dt ma goods cannot be sent 2 ma nigerian address.

Re: My experience shopping on Amazon with a Naira visa card Posted by Felix Okoli on Saturday March 9, 2013 at 14:59:52:

I-pin means internet pin or something like that. You'd see it when you select to do a change of pin from an enabled Naira Visa card on an ATM.

As for shopping on Amazon, you are not meant to use your Nigerian address as your shipping address since they don't ship to Nigeria except for a few items. You should use your Nigerian address as billing address since that is what is registered for your card. But for shipping address, you should use a US mail forwarding address.

Another way you can get buy something directly from Amazon and have it shipped to you is by buying those things they normally ship to Nigeria such as Books and DVDs. They could ship that directly to you in Nigeria.