Solo

Solo was in practice launched as a competitor to rival Visa’s Electron card. Solo cards acted as a conventional debit card, in that the card’s holders could withdraw cash from their bank account at cash machines (ATMs), and make payments directly from their bank accounts. The difference was that it was not possible to go overdrawn with these cards. Holders could only spend as much as they had in their account. Any attempt to spend more resulted in the transaction being declined. This meant that it was generally given to young people opening their first bank accounts, and to people with poor or non-existent credit records. In this way, it was an aid to budgeting, the idea being that these customers could not spend more than they could afford.

The brand was slowly withdrawn, to be replaced with the standard conventional debit card, but with more stringent conditions attached. Both Switch and Solo cards slowly faded from view as the controlling banks either switched to Visa or converted to the MasterCard owned brands. The Solo scheme was finally withdrawn in 2011.

Given the likely customer base, the Solo card was not a particularly commonly used method of payment for online bingo sites. The teenagers and younger students who were typically offered these cards were too young to be permitted to spend money on online gaming sites, which are for over 18s only. Those awarded the card because of a poor credit history would also be a very poor target for the online bingo sites’ marketing campaigns and in any case, would also be unlikely to be able to afford to spend much money on the sites in the first place.

So the loss of the Solo card was not mourned greatly by either the online bingo sites or their customers. There were and still are so many other alternative methods of payment to use that the demise of the Solo brand caused barely a ripple of inconvenience. All sites accept conventional Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards, and several other e-payment choices are available to those who prefer not to use their plastic. The most convenient alternative method is probably the Paysafecard. This is a pre-payment card which can be bought from many neighbourhood and high street stores – anywhere that displays the PayPoint symbol should be able to provide this service.

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