Hi, wondering if anyone with older relatives can offer any advice.
My dad is 87 and has Alzheimer’s. This has got to the stage where he’s had a mental capacity assessment and found to lack capacity to make his own financial decisions. We’ve obviously closed his credit card accounts, but even though he has no overdraft facilities on his current accounts his bank have said the law requires them to withdraw his access to fumds (cancelled his debit cards and cheque book). I have power of attorney so can manage his accounts and bills.
However he lives 60 miles from me with no local family. He has a shopper who takes him out once a week.
Does anyone know if I can open a prepaid card account for him even though he lacks mental capacity. I suspect the answer is no but asking anyway if anyone can point me at any info on this.
He’s understandably embarrassed at his shopper having to pay for his shopping using her card and us reimbursing her.
It would give him a bit of dignity back if we could give him a prepaid card.
Any advice or recommendations would be appreciated. Thanks!
Edit - a card in my name is not suitable, it has to be in his name. As his attorney i need it to be clear that it’s his money and his account and I’m not siphoning off his money.
Brilliant. Thanks @jo that looks like the answer to our needs. I had another requirement, which I forgot to include, blocking online and phone spending, and Sibstar allows that.
I was searching for prepaid cards and didn’t include the word dementia in the search - this never came up so they have work to do on their SEO.
But this looks great. I’ll get an application started today.
Thanks again for hunting this down. Really appreciate it.
Hi, @descendent unfortunately not. I used one of those for my mum during covid. But the difference was she had mental capacity to manage her own affairs and we did it informally with her full knowledge of what was happening.
With dad, he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on and as his attorney I need to be able to show that money leaving his account is being spent for him if I’m challenged.
Sibstar is designed for an attorney to run the account and set spending limits etc., but for the card to be in the name of the donor (person who has given power to the attorney).
It also allows ATM withdrawals which the Starling connected card doesn’t, which is needed for us. Dad only goes out shopping or to the ATM with a companion/shopper so this is ideal.
I have the Sibstar account details so tried to send a transfer to cover the initial fees. The account is in dad’s name (which is good). Confirmation of Payee service all checks out with a full match.
Dad’s legacy bank have blocked the transfer as fraudulent. I’ve spent ages on the phone to them. They have accepted that it’s legitimate.
After a frustrating day with a phone call to the fraud team, request to verify my ID (sent in the wrong name, from a test system not from a live environment), an hour in branch, and another very long phone call with the fraud team, I still can’t make a transfer to Sibstar. The branch staff did make a manual transfer, but…
Virgin don’t allow customers to use their personal accounts to buy cryptocurrency. The sort code used by Sibstar is also used by crypto companies. Therfore Virgin automatically blocks any customer initiated transfer to that sort code.
Waiting for a call back to tell me if they can authorise an exception.
Quite rudimentary, but what about a visa/mastercard gift card? Or even whichever supermarket it is, card for there? Could the carer buy him, I don’t know, 10x £50 cards to cover his weekly shop? Or do you buy them and send them “special” delivery to him once a week?
It’s my dad’s account (I have power of attorney). His Alzheimer’s lack of mobility and lack of photo ID, make opening a new account difficult.
NatWest offer more granular card controls than Virgin but don’t allow spending limits to be imposed (other than not having an overdraft and only keeping a small amount in the account).
Sibstar is a really good product, I just need to get Virgin to authorise a payee setup which works from online banking.
Thanks @revels we did look at that as a temporary thing but it would confuse him. He can still get the idea of having a card and PIN but a bunch of cards he doesn’t know the value of would be beyond him. Fortunately his shopping companion is a really lovely lady and has been brilliant helping us out the past few weeks.
Yes I agree, particularly when it’s linked to quite a few other non-crypto businesses it must be impacting quite a few customers.
The sort code is linked to ClearBank. They list clients like Coinbase and Kraken, but also Allica Bank and PayPoint for example. Possibly they have more than one sort code allocated to them, I haven’t checked, but as you say blocking an entire sort code seems extreme.
Virgin have whitelisted the account number and sort code for me. It’s taken almost a week to get to the bottom of it, I’ve spent hours on the phone and in branch, which fortunately is local to me.
Basically, a behind-the-scenes workaround is required for every customer who wants to send money to the ClearBank sort code, which is bonkers.
