Check your Cashplus card balance and transactions
To help you manage your money, we’ve made it easy for you to keep up-to-date with your Cashplus prepaid Gold MasterCard® card account balance.
How do I check my prepaid card balance and transaction history?
The easiest and quickest ways to check your Cashplus prepaid card balance and transactions are to visit the Cashplus Members Area, call our automated phone service or use our text service.
How is a transaction approved?
The business you want to pay checks with us that there’s enough money in your account to cover the cost. So when your Cashplus card is put in the Chip and PIN terminal, it connects to us online. If you have enough money in your account to pay for what you want to buy, we’ll hold the funds until the purchase is fully processed.
Of course, if there isn’t enough money in your account, we have to decline the purchase, but it’s easy to top up your account.
What’s a pending transaction?
A ‘pending transaction’ puts money to one side from the cash that’s in your account. Everything you pay for using your card starts off as a pending transaction and usually becomes authorised for payment within two calendar days. There are three main times when it might take longer for a transaction to become authorised:
- Something you’ve paid for or money you’ve withdrawn has been authorised for payment, but hasn’t been taken from your account yet, for example, a monthly DVD subscription.
- ‘Reserved’ funds requested by some places you use your card. For example, when checking in, some hotels take your Cashplus card details for an ‘authorisation transaction’ that reserves enough money to cover your bill.
- ‘Voids’. For example, when you change your mind about something you’ve bought and the store refunds it, or if a payment has been duplicated, it may take a few days for it to clear off your account.
You can view your pending transactions in the Members Area.
What happens to pending transactions?
The pending transaction will either go through, so the money is taken from your account, or it will be removed automatically within 7 days, with the money going back to your account balance. If you’d like a pending transaction to go through more quickly, we may be able to help – please contact Customer Services.
What’s an authorised transaction?
When you use your card to pay for something the amount is first listed on your account as a pending transaction, usually for a couple of days, but up to 7 days. After the company has taken the money, it becomes an authorised transaction, with the money deducted from your available balance. When a top up is available for you to spend, it becomes an authorised transaction right away.
You can view your authorised transactions in the Members Area.
How do I work out my available balance?
You just take your existing balance and add any top ups. Then subtract any pending transactions and everything that’s left is yours.
So for example, you have an existing balance of £500, you’ve topped up your account with £100 and recently paid £250 for a stay at a hotel using your card:
| Account balance | Top up | Pending transaction | Your available balance | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £500 |  |
£100 |  |
(£250) |  |
£350 - yours to spend or withdraw |
If you’re in the Members Area you can work out your available balance using the method above. But if you call our automated phone service or use our handy text alerts service, all the calculations are already done for you – so you can find out your available balance in seconds.
Why is my available balance less than the amount I topped up?
You may have bought something earlier, but the business hasn’t processed the payment from your account yet. Please see the section above on pending transactions for more details.
Why might a transaction be declined?
There are a number of reasons why your card might be declined, including:
- Not entering your PIN correctly
- Not having enough money in your account to cover the payment
- You card not being activated
- The card has passed its expiry date
What happens if a transaction that’s not mine appears on my account?
There are a few simple steps that you need to take if a purchase appears on your account that’s not yours:
- Please check with any additional cardholders on your account in case they’ve bought something that you don’t know about.
- Check through your receipts as a business name may be slightly different than the name they print on a receipt, which is the name that will appear in your transaction history in the Members’ Area.
- If none of the above helps you, please contact our Customer Services team or write to us as soon as possible, but within 13 months of the debit to your account (8 weeks if the amount of the debit was unknown e.g. car hire).
We may send you a Dispute Declaration Form for you to complete and return to us. If it turns out you (or an additional cardholder) did use your card to buy something that you’ve disputed, we may charge you £20.00 to cover our costs.
How quickly will my top up take to show on my account?
It depends on how you top up your account.