Allowing older children to have debit cards is often a controversial area.  This is for a good reason, as it may suit one child to have a debit card but not suit another.  The deciding factor as to whether a child should have a debit card is not age but financial maturity.

Debit cards are often a good idea for a child to start seeing how to use money and how easily money can be spent without taking care of the money.  It is a very good way of learning how to use a card before they get a credit card, which will be available quite soon after they reach eighteen.  However if they are given at the wrong time they may do more harm than good.

The good news is that it can be quite easy to measure a child’s financial maturity.  It has always been traditional to give a child an allowance or pocket money.  This allows a child to have some independence as to how they spend their money.  It also lets them know what it is like when they have spent all their money and they have no money left.

Some parents then open a bank account with a debit card and allow their child to simply use the debit card.  This means that goods can be purchased online and that the child will have more freedom to use their debit card.  If the child has a job then they can get their wages deposited into this bank account.

However it has often been found that without the connection between physical cash and the amount of money that they have that children can quickly spend money without realising it.  There are some intermediate steps between giving an allowance and putting the allowance into a bank.

Prepaid gift cards are a good step between a cash allowance and a bank account with a debit card.  These gift cards can have the child’s name on them and can then be used where ever debit cards and credit cards are used, including on line.  If there are relatives who tend to give cash presents to the child, then they may be encouraged to give a gift card.  As the cards can not be topped up then when the money runs out there will be no pressure to top it up, as there could be with a bank account.