A phone card or calling card may be a debit (prepaid) or credit card that contains printed or encoded information that allows the caller to pay for phone calls. There are lots of technologies for this, but the card is basically this. When the card is a debit card, the more common term is prepaid card or prepaid phone card.

A calling card is another name for a card that contains a person's name and personal contact information. Mostly, these days we see such cards in business context, and so they have come to be known as business cards. So, the term has fallen into disuse. Some people do still carry personal cards (cards that contain personal and contact information but which are not intended as business cards). Of course, when you come calling, you may leave either one behind, so that both have the function of "calling cards".

I hope this helps.

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Note added at 17 mins (2004-10-28 00:09:10 GMT)
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I\'ve just seen your note. Obviously, the non-phone meaning is extraneous here. The card you describe is prepaid or debit phone card/calling card only.

I disagree that a calling card is post-pay only. One can also have prepaid calling cards (see http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="prepaid calling card" ) and postpaid calling cards (see http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q="postpaid calling c... ).

Searches may be done on calling card, phone card and phonecard, modified by prepaid, postpaid, debit and credit.