Supervised banking for kids (or adults who need to be reigned in šŸ˜‚)

Basically if you were to get a monzo account or pre paid for a kid (or spouse who spends too much :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:) a parental lock feature that lets you monitor their spending not in terms of viewing their transactions but setting a daily spend budgets. Also a request button if the kid (or significant other) wants to spend more then his/her daily allowance they can send a request to the parent phone where they can accept or decline the request. Thereā€™s probably loads of flaws to this idea but food for thought for the powers at be.

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Check out Osper and GoHenry - both doing just this.

Monzo are laser focus on building the best current account in the world, I donā€™t think they will be branching out to niche markets in the next couple of years

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I signed up for goHenry (formerly PKTMNY) just last week. Itā€™s absoltely terrible.

  • app continually crashed
  • I was unable to log in on my sonā€™s phone despite creating account
  • charges for immediate payments to your child
  • app is extremely clunky
  • website login not functioning correctly, login screen doesnā€™t refresh, have to F5/Regresh page after login details entered
  • obstructive customer service assistants on chat you required name, address, email and date of birth before theyā€™d consider changing a lower case letter a on a name to upper case
  • In-app chat conversations are automatically deleted, so when you go back to look for the answer to your question itā€™s no longer there
  • In-app chat directed me to phone in. When I phoned in they said do in-app chat. Reluctance to take ownership
  • Ā£36pa per child is expensive just for the service

Absolutely terrible experience and Iā€™m having to wait ā€œup to ten daysā€ for a refund of the money Iā€™d put on the card

Instead, Iā€™ve gone for Nimbl which is only Ā£10pa with a three month free trial and no charges for quick payments to my son.

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There isnā€™t anything stopping Monzo allowing additional cards on an account where the main account holder controlling the funds. e.g allowing 1 card only having access to your ā€œShoppingā€ pot. or letting your kids have daily spending limits of maximum transaction.

Monzo have the freedom to do what they want. Whether they want to have that edge is a different matter :slight_smile:

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In not surprised there other people doing it but I love how monzo work and I donā€™t think it would be a huge overhaul just maybe a button when signing up switching the account into a kind of ā€˜restricted modeā€™ I dunno thought it might be nice feature if theyā€™re looking to create a bank for everyone

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I just applied for a second prepaid card and my son has been using that up until now. He canā€™t go overdrawn. Itā€™s my card, I just lent it to him.

I appreciate not doing the things that you ask for and, I too, would like to see Monzo being able to accommodate my kids.

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We aim to introduce parental controls yep. Our COO Tom Foster-Carter used to be at Osper so knows a thing or two about this!

With all due respect to companies like them, I personally think they wouldnā€™t need to exist if full current accounts actually provided decent features for parents of younger account holders! Theyā€™ve done a shockingly bad job here. Essentially the MVP should just be a case of disabling features like overdrafts,making the main account into a shared pot with the parent and blocking certain merchant categories on Mastercard like online gambling. This can obviously be automated based on date of birth of the account holder!

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I was able to sign up for internet banking 3 years before the minimum age presumably because the unnamed bankā€™s systems didnā€™t actually check my DOB against what was held on my account.

I signed up because I wanted greater control of my money - then, my choice was either to go into branch and check my balance or run a spreadsheet alongside it and hope and pray figures married up at the end of the month (when I got a statement).

Why make it hard for young people to manage their money effectively!?!

Top man. Thanks for the feedback :slight_smile:

Interesting you say about restricting spending on certain sites. This is the type of security the company I currently work at sell to businesses but not as a financial point of view.

Very interesting

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Hi all,
Recently I have been introduced to Mondo through a friend. However after starting the signup process, I was confused to find out that you have to be over 18 to sign up to the alpha. I am 15 years old and currently have a HSBC debit card, and to be honest I am fed up of their app that in my opinion is not up to the same standard as the Mondo app.

I was actually really looking forward to receiving a Mondo card, is there any particular reason why currently only over 18ā€™s can sign up, as if it was possible I would be delighted to be able to enrol in the alpha programme

Kind Regards
Sean Casey

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@seancasey I believe to receive a contactless bank card from any bank/provider you need to be 18+. I may be wrongā€¦

@stuart Hmm, not sure if this is the case. I have checked the Visa and HSBC website and there is no mention of an age restriction on contactless cards

@seancasey The only reason I said that was because my girlfriends little brother was told this via the Bank of Scotland.

Could be something due to contactless payments sometimes taking longer to show on your account and possibly putting you into the negative? (Not sure why this would be different to someone 17 or someone 27 thoā€¦)

hmm weird, I guess this is a question for @tom

Interesting question. Under 16s canā€™t normally have overdrafts because debts are unenforceable against them.

But that shouldnā€™t stop an under 16 opening a bank account without an overdraft. Contactless cards should make no difference as far as I know.

However, we have to agree our T&Cs with Wirecard at the moment, and for the sake of expediency we chose to limit the account to over 18s. I imagine thatā€™s pretty frustrating for you - apologies.

This will certainly be something we look at again as we progress towards our own banking licence.

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Yeah, Iā€™m sure Iā€™ve had a debit card since a young age but Iā€™m guessing as soon as it hit Ā£0 it wouldnā€™t go any lower!

Now if you had a contactless card and made a payment at Ā£0 which didnā€™t show for a couple of days this would force you into an overdraft this may be the reason behind it?

Its a shame, I was really looking forward to getting a card :joy::disappointed_relieved: , anyway ive sent a message to Wirecard to enquire about this. I will post the response when/if I receive one

@seancasey not sure what Wirecard would be able to do to help you as @tom said:[quote=ā€œtom, post:6, topic:1689ā€]
we chose to limit the account to over 18s
[/quote]
So it would be for Mondo to change their terms with Wirecard to accept users who are under 18.

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I have two teenage daughters who have full bank accounts with Metro Bank, which provides them with contactless debit cards.

Having used Mondo for just a week now, I think it would be a great money-management tool for kids. One of the things they are always struggling with is tracking their balance, and we constantly have to go to ATMs just so they can do a balance check. They both have iPhones, so being able to track their expenditure in real-time would be fantastic.

Itā€™s definitely a market to consider. Itā€™s the teenagers who expect to manage everything on their smartphones, including their money.

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Definitely agree with @rmacdonald , Im sure there is a huge potential market in teenagers who want a current account where they can monitor their money through their smartphone rather than having to visit a branch/ATM every time they want to check their balance.

I have contacted Wirecard and am awaiting a response, If they are willing to make a change I would hope that Mondo would also be willing to change their T&Cā€™S to allow under 18ā€™s. Fingers crossed