Axis Bank USD Travel Cards - A really bad product

I had to travel for a short 3 month trip to the US. Our company Capgemini tied up with Axis bank for providing USD Travel Cards for meeting our day to day expenses in the US.

For those who do not know what's a cash card, imagine it as a Debit card which can be used at any merchant establishment which accepts VISA cards. The company initially deposits a certain amount of money up front in the card which can then be used. Once the money exhausts, additional money can be added. This makes the travelers life easy coz' he then does not need to carry a lot of currency with him.

Axis card provides such cash cards as one of their products. However, these cash cards are almost useless and incur a lot of loss to people who've bought these.

Firstly, whenever you use them at any of the ATM's a charge of $3 is charged. Whether you withdraw $20 or $200 the charge remains constant.

Secondly, most people would generally do online shopping when they visit the US since you get better deals online. These cash cards do not work online since they do not have the concept of a "Billing Address" and "Security Code", which are normally present on any VISA cards. This shortcoming makes this product really useless.

Thirdly, guess what? $1 charge if you need to change your ATM password! Yup, you read it right. If you forgot your ATM password and need to reset it, they happily charge you $1 to do that. Have you heard any service charging you $1 for changing the password on their cards? This is ridiculous and outrageous.

Fourthly, their web interface is really user unfriendly. When you try to register they take you to a site called iconnect, which is the name for their core banking website and it asks for a "Corporate Id" for the login. When asked to their Customer Service execs they say that we have no idea about the iconnect. It's supposed to be used internally by the bank employees!! Frustrating to the core, isn't it?

I'd really advise anybody to carefully choose a Travel Card product and save themselves all the hassles mentioned above. Pls evaluate all the products out there before making your choice.