An East Lothian-based fintech start-up has gone live nationwide with a prepaid Visa card and savings platform aimed at pet owners who want to plan for veterinary bills without a traditional insurance policy.
MyPetCard, founded and run by John Darlington through his Longniddry-registered operating company Petcards UK Ltd, launched across the UK in late August 2026 and is available at mypetcard.co.uk. The company describes itself as “the first card in the UK to help owners save monthly for vet bills, treatments and medications”. The launch was carried by the FinTech Scotland cluster body’s newsroom on 27 August, which is the trade home for Scottish fintech announcements.
How the product works
Customers open an account, complete a KYC-style sign-up including their pet’s details, and receive a prepaid Visa card that can only be used for vet-related spending. Monthly top-ups start at a minimum of £20, funded via Open Banking. Balances can be spent directly at UK veterinary practices and online pet pharmacies.
The company is explicit that the product is not insurance. Its own site states: “MyPetCard is a savings product, not insurance. It does not cover costs beyond your saved balance. A third-party credit option may be available to help with larger bills, subject to eligibility.” Unused balances remain the customer’s; when an account is closed, the remaining funds are returned. If a pet dies, the release says “the remaining balance can be returned to the customer or retained to support the care of a future pet.”
Alongside the card itself, members get:
- A 24/7 vet advice line (phone and video) staffed by qualified vets and vet nurses
- A pet-medicine price search designed to find competitive prices online
- Local veterinary price-comparison services
- Optional access to 0% and low-cost financing through a third-party partner network of more than 2,000 independent UK veterinary practices, subject to status
Founder’s rationale: transparency and animal-welfare framing
Darlington, who has worked in the veterinary and animal-medicines sector for two decades, positions the product as a response both to consumer frustration with insurance and to the affordability pressures pushing owners to postpone treatment.
“I wanted to create a simpler and more transparent solution that puts control back into the hands of pet owners,” he said in the launch release. “Having worked with veterinary practices and animal medicines for 20 years, I became increasingly frustrated by the dilemmas owners face sometimes having to choose between the cost of treatment and the care their pet needs.”
He linked the product directly to household affordability data: “When two in three pet owners say they could not afford unexpected surgery and millions are already delaying veterinary visits because of cost, it is clear that people need another way to prepare.”
Darlington was careful to position MyPetCard alongside, rather than in place of, insurance: “Insurance can provide protection, but exclusions, claim rejections, excesses, claim limits and rising premiums mean it does not always meet every owner’s needs. MyPetCard gives customers another option where there are no exclusions.”
On the roadmap: “As MyPetCard grows, we will continue developing membership benefits, price-comparison services and a supportive community for animal lovers.”
He closed on an animal-welfare argument: “This could also have a positive impact on animal welfare. No owner wants to postpone treatment because they are worried about the cost. Building a dedicated pet-care fund—and having access to tools that help reduce costs—can provide valuable reassurance when treatment is needed.”
Market context cited in the launch
The launch release grounds the proposition in Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) data on the pet-insurance segment. According to the FOS figures cited by MyPetCard, there were 2,065 new pet-insurance complaints during 2025/26, with a 41% uphold rate for resolved cases — a modest reduction on 2024/25 volumes, but a level the company frames as evidence that policy exclusions, claim rejections and small-print limitations continue to generate consumer friction in the segment.
MyPetCard says the UK pet-care market has expanded significantly on the back of rising pet ownership, but that the combination of veterinary-cost inflation and the complexity of insurance products has left an affordability and transparency gap for many households. The company positions its prepaid-card model as a way of closing that gap for owners — including the roughly 80% of UK pets its site says are uninsured — who want a dedicated, ring-fenced pet-care fund without a monthly premium they cannot recover.
Next steps
The service is live UK-wide. The company says it has “ambitions to expand into the United States and other international markets” in due course. For a Longniddry-founded PetTech fintech joining the FinTech Scotland cluster’s active members list on day one, that is a materially larger addressable market than the UK alone — assuming Petcards UK Ltd can secure the required US money-transmission and prepaid-programme partnerships when it is ready to move.
