I think my company uses VISA recharge to pay expenses to people in some situations.
I know cards have a facility to take funds for refunds but can that be used to fund any prepay card? If so, an exchange could charge a prepaid card with the proceeds of a Bitcoin sale.
short answer: yes and no
recharge is indeed a prepaid/debitcard system. but with all prepaid debit card systems there are limitations.
i see your a UK guy so ill use UK wording based on the prepayment service providers i have spoken with.
each Brand of prepaid card has a corporate prepaid card account for the retailer/business which money gets deposited to and the controller of the account then credits each card balance within its scheme.
so lets say you have a Shell Petrol station prepaid card and so does a friend. it is easy and straight forward to credit/swap balances with other users of the same brand card scheme and i beleive all prepayment cards offer easy transfers within the same scheme. because ultimately there is only one physical bank account and all the clients/customers of the scheme are just balances of a ledger of that single corporate account.
now lets say shell petrol stations and virgin megastores used the same card issuer to do their branding. it is also possible to move the funds through each other via the corporate accounts. but this is up to the retail stores agree to offer this and they may add fee's.due to the fact that the retailers would then need to be licenced money transmitters
but if for instance Shell dealt with visa directly. but virgin megastores used a prepayment card issuer. it is even harder to move the money, not impossible and more then likely not free.. due to the fact that the retailers would then need to be licenced money transmitters
