Learn English – to top up a mobile phone

phrase-requestword-choice

In the UK people can say

I need to top up my mobile phone
(= pay more money so you can make more calls)

How do we say this sentence casually in the US or other countries?

Best Answer

American English doesn't have a good idiom for this. "Top up" is used very rarely. It may sometimes be used to describe filling up a partially-full container of liquid ("I've drunk half of the coffee from my mug; please top it up."), though "top off" is more common. Neither is used to talk about putting money in accounts.

Apparently Virgin Mobile calls their cards "top-up cards," but TracPhone and Boost Mobile never use the phrase "top-up" anywhere on their sites. (Instead, they use "Add airtime" or "Refill.") Apparently Best Buy sometimes uses "top-up" to describe refill cards, but mostly the carriers themselves call them "Refill cards." (Consider this example from Verizon: the Best Buy website calls it a "top-up card" but the phrase "top-up card" does not appear anywhere on the product. Instead, it says "Refill card.")

Instead, Americans would probably use add minutes or add more minutes in conversation:

I need to add [more] minutes to my phone. I'm almost out of minutes.

Note that the British prefer "mobile" to talk about mobile phones, while American speakers prefer to say "cell" to talk about their cell phones.

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