Why You Should Consider a Debit Card for Your Child
Are you considering getting a debit card for your child? As kids get older, the thought of giving them more control over their money can be scary. As parents, we worry about whether they’ll make smart decisions regarding savings and spending.
Thankfully, there are debit cards designed specifically for kids. With features like parental controls, roundup savings, autopay for chores, and more, kids’ debit cards can alleviate parents’ fears while allowing kids to learn how to manage their money properly.
The best debit cards for kids have a few things in common: They’re affordable, easy to use, and have sufficient parental control features.
Updated December 2024 with new plan names, features, and pricing for several companies on this list.
Best For: Large families
FamZoo is a prepaid debit card that offers full parental control for kids of any age. Kids ages 13 and up get their own card; kids under 13 get a card that you legally own as their parent.
You’ll pay $5.99 per month for FamZoo no matter how many kids you sign up for the program. Or you can pay $25.99 for six months, $39.99 for 12 months, or $59.99 for 24 months.
You’ll have full parental control and notifications for all activity. You can also set up chore checklists and pay when chores are completed.
You can set up automatic transfers between your checking and the child’s debit card. Your kids can also send payment requests and there is a loan tracking feature.
Here’s our full review of FamZoo for more information.
Best For: Earning interest
Greenlight offers debit cards to kids of all ages. The company has three plans to choose from, and prices vary based on the plan you choose.
Greenlight Core: Greenlight Core is $5.99 per month and includes debit cards for up to five kids, a chore management feature, automatic transfer options, and parental controls. Kids savings accounts earn 2% interest.
Greenlight Max: Greenlight Max costs $9.98 per month. It offers all the Greenlight Core features and includes the option to add an investment account for each child. Kids savings earns 3%, and they can earn up to 1% cash back on purchases.
Greenlight Infinity: Greenlight Infinity costs $14.98 per month and includes all the Max features, including up to 1% cash back on purchases. Kids can earn 5% interest on their savings. This plan also includes identity theft monitoring, mobile phone protection coverage, and priority customer support.
Here’s our full review of Greenlight for more information.
Best For: Current customers
Current is a fintech company that offers banking accounts for adults and kids 13 and up. As a parent, you must open your own Current account to be eligible to open one for your teen. You can set up chores, quickly transfer funds between accounts, block merchants, and receive notifications of activity on your teen’s account.
Your kid can also withdraw cash at an ATM, and you can adjust the ATM limits as you see fit.
Current accounts have savings pods that help your teen save for specific goals and can earn up to 4% interest on the balance.
Here’s our full review of Current for more information.
Best For: Investing
The Acorns Early debit card is free for the first month and then costs $5 per month per kid. They also have a family plan for $10 for up to four children. The minimum age requirement for this card is six.
The parental account included with Acorns Early acts as a command center of sorts, where you can manage all of the kids’ debit cards and set up and pay chores. You can set multiple spending limits, such as ATM withdrawal limits, weekly spending limits, and pre-purchase spending limits.
Kids can set savings goals and put a designated amount of money in their savings pod. They also can give money to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.
If you have an Acorns Gold account, you can open an Acorns Early Invest account and invest funds from the Acorns Early account just as you would invest your own. You are the account holder, and your child is the beneficiary.
Here’s our full Acorns Early review for more information.
Best For: Donating to charity
BusyKid has an award-winning app that allows you to set chores, transfer funds, and fully control your child’s experience.
Your kid can earn money from doing chores, spend, save, invest and give. You can set up a savings match to encourage better saving habits, and there are over 60 charities to choose from.
You also don’t have to upgrade to a higher plan in order to unlock investing features. There are over 4,000 companies and ETFs available for investing.
BusyKid is available for kids ages five and older.
Best For: Traditional checking
The Capital One MONEY Teen account is available for children ages eight and up when opened as a joint account with a parent. There are no fees for this account and account balances earn interest of 0.10%.
This is a traditional checking account, not just a debit card linked to an app. It doesn’t include any chore features; however, there are parental controls, and the child will have their own app experience.
You can link your own checking account for transfers, and it doesn’t have to be a Capital One checking — you can link an external account.
There is a savings goal feature and Capital One also has a kids saving account.
Here’s our full Captial One 360 review for more information.
Best For: Chase customers
The Chase First Banking account is a traditional checking account and comes with a debit card. It is available for kids ages six and up. You must have your own Chase checking account to open a Chase First Banking account.
You have full control of the account, including setting spending and ATM limits, receiving notifications, and setting and paying chores.
Kids can also request a money transfer from you at any time, which you can approve or deny.
The Chase First Banking account does not have monthly or overdraft fees, and parents can open up to five accounts per parent/guardian.
Also, note that this account does not allow Direct Deposit. So if you’ve got a working teen that has Direct Deposit paychecks, you may want to open the Chase High School Checking account instead.
Best For: ATM reimbursements
The Axos First Checking account is available for teens ages 13 to 17. It has no monthly fees and no overdraft fees. It also earns 0.10% APY
Parental notifications are available, you can view all the transactions, and you can activate or deactivate the debit card anytime. This is a traditional checking account with no chore management features.
Your kid will have ATM access, and Axos will reimburse up to $12 a month in ATM fees.
One possible downside of the Axos account is that the daily spending and ATM limits are preset at $500 and $100, respectively. You can’t adjust these limits.
Here’s our full Axos Bank review for more information.
Giving your child access to a set amount of money each week or month is a great way to teach them money management skills.
They become responsible for knowing how much money they have in their account and what they will spend it on.
If money is limited, they gain the experience of choosing which items they want to spend their money on and which purchases they’d rather save for another time.
These discipline exercises can go a long way in helping them prepare to have good budgeting skills as adults.
In real life, you need to work to earn money. And while it’s common for parents to hand their kids cash whenever they need it, doing so regularly isn’t helping prepare them for real life.
Many kids’ debit cards have features that allow you to assign chores to your child and then schedule a designated amount of pay when those chores are completed.
This feature can be a great way to help your child understand that work equals money in the real world.
In addition, you can use the feature to encourage your child to take on extra chores when they need extra money for a large expense.
The result? Less work for you, a great life lesson for your child.
Along with that, having a debit card for your child can make your life easier.
Many kids’ debit cards have an automatic deposit feature letting you decide when you want money to go into their account and how much money you want to deposit.
For instance, you could set up an automatic deposit of $50 a week for lunch money. Utilizing this feature for your child’s individual needs can help make your life much easier.
You don’t have to worry about your child regularly harassing you for cash, and your child has steady access to the money they need through their debit card.
There are two kinds of debit cards for kids — a prepaid debit card or a traditional checking account.
Prepaid debit cards (FamZoo, Greenlight, Acorns Early, and Busykid) link to your checking account and then are managed through the app. You load money onto the cards from your personal checking account and then the kids can spend it using the debit card.
Traditional checking accounts (Capital one MONEY Teen, Chase First Banking, and Axos First Checking) work just like your own checking account. It’s a real deposit account with an account number and routing number. You’ll likely still want to link your own checking account to it for easy transfers, but it’s not strictly necessary.
There is no shortage of options when it comes to choosing a debit card for your child. To help narrow the search, we recommend focusing on the most important features to you and the age at which you want your child to have a debit card. Also, if you decide that your child isn’t quite ready, that’s ok too. But when the time comes, a debit card can help them learn powerful money management skills early in life.
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