Debit card etc for under-18s?

My son (16) has a debit card (HSBC, IIRC). Maybe banks differ? Obviously not legislation!

No such legislation that I know of. But the risk could be with the Bank, if the minor wanted to cancel any contract for non essentials?

responsibility

I was 20 and my bank refused to give me a Switch card. With Maestro (fka Switch) cards its sometimes possible to use them without money in your account. For this reason banks won't give Maestro to anyone they see as a potential risk.

Your daughter is however eligible for a Solo card, anyone 11 or over can get one

The bank person who told you this was almost certainly mistaken.

The Solo card sounds like what you're after. Unfortunately RBS don't offer this, at least not to youngsters, but other banks do. I think Bank of Scotland do. According to

responsibility

respect of

Obviously

I saw a case on Judge Judy where a guy gave his 17 yr old friend/daughter(?) an additional credit card on his account. She maxed it out, admitted it but refused to pay. The guy tried to sue this girl who was then 18 for the money but was told that because she was under

But, if a bank gave a Maestro card to someone who was 16, I wonder what would happen if the card was used at shops that don't use online authorisation, to take them into thousands of pounds of overdraft. Would the bank be in the same situation as the guy on Judge Judy?

My daughter has a HSBC Solo card - works well and very widely accepted. Every transaction is credit verified first so she can't overdraw

Set up an account in your name and get her a card for the account, I think that *is* allowed for under 18s. If the account is only used by her then there is no difficulty separating transactions. You could even get her a credit card this way.

wrote

I thought that even additional cardholders on credit cards must be over 18??

Further to other poster's answers:

There is no legislation, AFAIK, but naturally no bank will issue a fully fledged debit card to anyone under the age of 18 (because they tend to double-up as cheque guarantee cards) due to the risk of the account being forced into an overdrawn position, from which the bank have no right of recovery.

Solo and Visa Electron ARE offered however.

Nearly every bank offer these options to minors.

MC

both mine had debit cards from barclays when they were that sort of age IIRC (hmmmm or was it when they got to 16, cant quite recall), they were restricted in some way, for example couldnt be used over the net at most places, but otherwise worked fine.

Visa Electron, that was the jobby

In message , Lobster writes

What makes you think it is 'no-overdraft'?. Debit cards are not on line all the time and overdrafts can arise.

If you want her to 'take more responsibility' then you have to let her take the rough with the smooth, or perhaps you shouldnt let a youngster carry so much cash then. Why not look after it for her yourself?

Has she got a mobile phone?

Not anymore, Bank of Scotland/Halifax have migrated from Solo to Electron.

Landru.

Because Solo cards (perhaps Electron too?) are specifically always authorised on line and cannot create an overdraft. It's part of their spec.

This does have the disadvantage that they are less universally accepted than "normal" debit cards like Switch, because not all retailers are geared up to handle all-the-way-to-the-customer's account online authorisation.

Thanks to all for all the replies. I'll get back to the bank first and see if I can get any more joy with getting a Switch card as it sounds like they may have fed me some wrong info.

About the above - one potential pitfall I can see there comes from experience: my wife opened a joint account with her mother, who then had early Alzheimer's and wasn't capable of running her own account any more. Mother-in-law had a cashpoint card to enable her to obtain funds. It certainly wasn't an ideal arrangement in many ways, but for many reasons which I won't go into, was the only way forward, and has now ended anyway.

The account was always run at a very low balance (

But if the bank doesn't issue a cheque book...? (and they haven't - and my daughter has had this account for 2-3 years already).

What's the fundamental difference between these ands Switch which makes them OK for youngsters, whereas Switch apparently isn't?

David

I think you've already been told this in one of the other posts, perhaps you missed it.

The problem is that Switch isn't always authorised directly to the account, so it would be possible to run up an overdraft.

Minors are in law incapable of entering into contracts, and so a bank would be unable to sue the minor to recover the debt, since it can only have been created as a consequence of an agreement, but the minor can't enter into a legally enforcible agreement.

The banks don't want to take the risk that they would lose out as a result. It'd be the similar if giving them a cheque book. A minor's signature isn't worth the paper it's written on.

In message , Ronald Raygun writes

Er, thanks fore the revision. The OP only referred to a 'switch' card.