Britain gets Skype prepay cards

Microsoft-owned voice over IP provider Skype announced that it has partnered with five British high street retailers to sell prepaid cards in their stores.

Some 1,400 stores in Britain will carry the cards for £10 ($15.40) and £20 ($30.80) that are redeemed on Skype's website.

The cards will be scratch-panel ones, and can be used by existing and new users.

Skype, which Microsoft bought last year for US$8.5 billion, had just over 41 million unique users, spending on average 13 minutes per call.

These user numbers could increase as Microsoft is making a big push with new Skype clients available on Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.

Microsoft also intends to retire its popular Windows Live Messenger instant messaging client in favour of Skype, which in turn will use the IM client's backend so that it doesn't have to be running constantly as is the case now.