✅ Family accounts / Accounts for children / under-16s

[Ramazan_119 (Ramazan Samat)]

It would be convenient to open an child account to give pocket money and monitor child’s spending.

[Jkb114 (Josh Bray)]

Atm no. As unfortunately Monzo cards are not available for anyone under the age of 18. The agreement with wirecard solutions prevents it. They may choose to offer to offer accounts to under 18’s when they launch their current accounts in early 2017

[patrice58 (Leon)]

Bit odd when it’s just prepay at the moment. When it becomes a bank it’s different. It would not be morally right to cancel children’s cards when it becomes a bank. So I guess having it this way is a necessary evil.

[Feathers (MikeF)]

No, it’s simply that having children testing the systems would offer no evidence over and above that provided by the rest of us testing it.

[patrice58 (Leon)]

So then there is no reason not to have children using it.

[Feathers (MikeF)]

As already stated the wirecard agreement prevents it and there was no reason to do the extra work for a different agreement.

[patrice58 (Leon)]

Really? How strange? Fair enough.

[Rika (Scarlet)]

Not quite but sure where this thread is going but I feel like this post about the long term support of the prepaid cards needs linking.

Launching The Bank

You shouldn’t need to pass a credit check to get a current account with no overdraft. But we may need do an identity check. We’re not planning to support the prepaid card in the UK for the long term - it adds a lot of operational complexity without much benefit. We’ll try to offer a basic bank account which should be available to more-or-less everyone in the UK, so it seems like a pretty good replacement for the prepaid card.

As for @Ramazan_119’s original post, there are no (public) solid plans but here is some community discussion around it, including talk about a hackathon project that ran along these same lines and a comment from @jonas that sub-accounts are something they want to offer in the future.

Idea: Monzo for schools

Hi Matthew, thanks for the thoughtful idea! That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m hoping we’ll be able to do You can teach both financial literacy and data analysis and some light programming skills at the same time. Imagine a child arguing for a larger allowance because they keep track of their expenses and can prove that they aren’t just spending their money on candy! During this alpha test we can’t hand out cards to under 18 y/o kids but some form of sub-accounts for family me…

Loaner and family member cards

Great idea for the kids and potentially a great marketing technique. potentially allowing them to have there own app to 'budget ’ from with the bank of mum and dad topping up as required. Remember children are future customers!!

KidsCash and Mondo Alfred (Hackathon)

Just read about Kidscash by @duncang and @kennygrant on the Hackathon blog entry - what a fantastic idea. Does anyone know if this is going to be picked up and run with? This is what I’m looking for! Mondo for Alfred is another excellent hack. Really hope that @rick manages to clean it up and release as suggested on the blog. Keep up the great work everyone.

Multiple Cards, One Account

Sharing mondo with a friend of mine who has children, they asked if you could have multiple cards controlled by one account. They were always conscious about giving their children cash incase they lost it and would like to give them a card like Mondo’s where they can top it up with certain amounts and freeze it of their child lost it. Of course the child is too young (under 18) for their own account, that’s why their cards would be connected to their parents account(s).

[irish_malt (Si)]

I wonder how Osper get around it ? Great for my kids X

[Feathers (MikeF)]

There’s.nothing to ‘get around’. I presume they just entered into a different agreement with the card company concerned.

[irish_malt (Si)]

Then why can’t we get the same agreement Mr know it all?

[Jkb114 (Josh Bray)]

It’s probably just that they have a different agreement with their provider.

[anon4562461]

Not quite sure if you intended that to come across as aggressive as it sounds.

Monzo probably didn’t enter in that sort of agreement because that’s not what they were aiming for at the time. At this point it’s not even worth them looking at renegotiating or entering a separate agreement for a child card. Osper is a company solely aimed at providing a pre-paid debit card for 8-18 year olds. Monzo are using pre-paid cards as a stop gap to prove their technology works as they progress towards becoming a full bank. The pre-paid cards will stop being issued as soon as Monzo can issue real debit cards. At least, that’s the last I heard.
Once Monzo has been running as a full bank for some time they may well look at doing something like this. I’d be surprised if they did it any time soon.

[anon44204028]

That is right. Monzo (then Mondo) explained before that it is a stipulation in their contraxt with the card providers.

[Rika (Scarlet)]

Have an exact quote from @tom.
https://community.monzo.com/t/mondo-card-for-under-18s/1689/6?u=richardr&source_topic_id=5648

[Feathers (MikeF)]

If you’re just going to be rude I’m not going to bother replying. Work it out for yourself.

Is there an ‘Ignore’ option on this forum?

[alexs (Alex Sherwood)]

One of the things that makes this community so great is that the conversation is almost always constructive, lets all try to keep it that going.

But if you have an issue with a user that you’ve been unable to resolve, there is this option in your user settings -

[anon44204028]

and my boy keeps asking me for one…explained why but it does not sink in at 11

[EdW (Edward Whishaw)]

Can I offer a thought? If Monzo are going to continue with the Pre-Paid cards, is it possible to have a ‘family member’ option where a spending-capped pre-paid card can be made available as an addition to an existing account, falling under the single primary user’s contract but allowing a secondary mobile device to be registered and to allow for some basics, such as contactless spending? Either that, or to have a ‘virtual’ pocket money spending limit where a primary card can be used but the transaction deducted from this ‘virtual’ bucket by the card holder, just as a good way of accounting for pocket money?

My problem with Osper and Henry is they cost more than the pocket money given, so unless a family member is going to use it a lot it seems a very expensive luxury … however, our kids are going to grow up in the digital / cash-less age so I want to start them understanding money not as a wallet / purse of coins but as a number that has meaning on an accounting app …

[anon44204028]

they are not going to continue with prepaid cards