Lets face it, spending on plastic is easy. Theres no need risk carrying around wads of notes or wallets bursting with coins. You can pay bills over the phone, and pay for a holiday over the internet. Spending with plastic doesnt even feel like parting with money a lot of the time, especially when youre using a credit card and dont have to worry about paying the bill off until at least the end of the month when you can get away with the minimum repayment amount. Right?

Think again. Credit card spending may be convenient but also dangerous. It is the reason that most Australians are spending more than they earn and owe thousands of dollars on their credit cards, making the big banks like Westpac big bucks in the form of interest charges and credit card fees.

Plastic is not all bad news though. EFTPOS facilities and debit cards, such as westpacs Debit MasterCard, allow you to access your own money rather than racking up a credit card bill that could take months and thousands of dollars in interest to pay off.

The Westpac Debit MasterCard is able to be used wherever MasterCard is accepted, which is at over 24 million locations worldwide, plus over the phone and online.

Another alternative to using credit is the gift of a Westpac MasterCard Gift Card. The card costs $4.95, plus the denomination of the card, which can be any amount between $15 and $800. Westpacs Gift Card works in the same way as a gift voucher but is available to be used in the same situations a MasterCard can be used.

When making a purchase, the Westpac MasterCard Gift Card holder simply needs to select credit rather than the cheque or savings options. Gift Card recipients can also check their balance online to see how much they have left to spend.

The Westpac MasterCard Gift Cards cannot be topped up, so they are suited to short term or once-off use rather than as a regular account, but as they work on a pre-paid basis, the card holder will not have a credit card bill to face at the end of the month.

Products such as the Westpac Debit MasterCard and MasterCard Gift Card are great examples of the ways that you can combine the convenience of plastic spending with the security of accessing your own money rather than relying on credit and facing bills, fees and interest charges.