I've seen the BA Prepaid Mastercard been advertised in the lounges but the market for it seems to be a little thin. I applied for it (to apply download the BA Executive Club Rewards app, this is different to the regular BA app) as it's free for the first few months. It's 1 Avios per £2 spend.

Some observations:

• Points are based on a per transaction basis which does clog up your BAEC statement
• Transactions are rounded to the nearest £2, e.g. a £1.20 transaction surprisingly got me 1 Avios instead of zero. A £7.10 transaction got 4 Avios
• It works with Apple Pay, apparently not yet with Google Pay

I've not tried it overseas yet, apparently it's fee free in EUR or USD if you top up the particular currency wallet, this could be useful to me if I could top it up from my Euro or US dollar bank accounts but it only seems possible to top up from a UK account and then you have to convert it to EUR or USD (perhaps that's where they make their money, I've not checked the exchange rates yet).

So I see the main users of this card are people with poor credit ratings so can't get a BA credit card (or those who don't want the temptation of a card), I think as it's not a credit card then bankrupts can also get it (but that's also very niche) also those with a different Barclaycard (in my case Hilton) can't apply for another Barclaycard without cancelling theirs.

So what's in this card for BA? I can't see how they'll make much money off it. Do they gain anything at all with it? I think most will cancel before the fee kicks in. Presumably those who keep the card once the fee kicks in will only be those who earn enough Avios to make it worthwhile - so am I missing something and are the interchange fees on prepaid cards uncapped so actually cost the retailer more so that these transactions do make money for BA?