Teenagers travelling abroad without parents - prepaid cash card?

zoearmfield

Looking for some guidance. Taking a small group of teenagers (14-16) to Canada this summer. They need around £200 spending money each. We cannot facilitate them taking cash due to security issues.

Therefore ideally we'd use prepaid cash cards (e.g. Cash Passport). However they are nearly all over 18s only.

I have found one where the parent can apply for the card, but have a second card that can be used by a child over 13. Its called My Travel Cash Prepaid Mastercard (sorry can't post link as new user but its mytravelcash dot com)

Does this look awful rates-wise? Any other better ideas?

zoearmfield

Have also actually found that the FairFX currency card does a Family and Friends additional card for anyone over 13, so that might be best?

grumbler

zoearmfield wrote: »

Does this look awful rates-wise?

"Multi-Currency/GBP card: 2.99% is added to the day’s MasterCard exchange rate when the transaction is processed.
2.99% fee applies for GBP withdrawals and payments."

~3% is pretty much typical for the majority of debit and credit cards.

The best ones charge 0%, the worst charge some flat fee on the top of ~3%.

eskbanker

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/prepaid-cards#teens has some that may be of interest.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/prepaid-travel-cards also has options but without spelling out which are suited for teenage cardholders. I set my daughter up with a FairFX card a few years ago for a school trip (as a secondary cardholder) but it's not clear on the MSE page whether they still allow that, no doubt the card's own site would clarify....

System

I worked for MasterCard Cash Passport for a while in Australia. The rules for our cards were universal, a parent could buy and load up the card and give it to their children to take with them. The company was owned by Travelex but MasterCard then took over and branched out (you get better rates with MasterCard than Travelex). However it's an expensive way to exchange foreign currency, what about traveller's cheques? They're widely accepted in the USA and Canada!

Eleanor62

I've just been looking into this as my 17 year old daughter is travelling to the USA in 5 weeks time to stay with a friend and needs to be able to access the spending money she has saved up (we are only paying for the flight).

She has an account with Nationwide and could use her card but that means 2% charge on purchases and 2% + £1 to withdraw cash :-(

I found all the pre-paid card specify 18 or over and as the terms and conditions state the strip at the back has to be signed I would worry about her running into problems using a card in my name.

The alternative would appear for me to get a FairFX card and then buy her a Family card attached to it. That would mean no fee on purchases and $2 on cash withdrawals which saves her money. I'll also be easily able to top it up if she wants more (as long as she has moved her savings into my bank account of course).

Do any other providers do a Family card?

grumbler

Eleanor62 wrote: »

I've just been looking into this as my 17 year old daughter is travelling to the USA in 5 weeks time to stay with a friend and needs to be able to access the spending money she has saved up (we are only paying for the flight).

She has an account with Nationwide and could use her card but that means 2% charge on purchases and 2% + £1 to withdraw cash :-(

I found all the pre-paid card specify 18 or over and as the terms and conditions state the strip at the back has to be signed I would worry about her running into problems using a card in my name.

The alternative would appear for me to get a FairFX card and then buy her a Family card attached to it. That would mean no fee on purchases and $2 on cash withdrawals which saves her money. I'll also be easily able to top it up if she wants more (as long as she has moved her savings into my bank account of course).

Do any other providers do a Family card?

reclusive46 wrote: »

You can take out a Caxton FX dollar prepaid card in your name. You can then add him as a second card (The min age is 13).

http://www.caxtonfx.com/currency-cards/currency-cards-for-you/

You could also take out the Capital One Aspire world or Capital One classic extra as they are both fee free abroad and capital one doesn't have any min age for additional card holders.

..................

Maelwys

grumbler wrote: »

..................

Slight issue with those Caxton FX Cards.

This is going to be a group of kids going, yes? Similar ages, probably know each others' Birthdays?

When I got a Euro Caxton card about 9 months ago, the damn thing would never accept my PIN at the ATM. Whilst trying to get them to resolve this, I noticed that when you ring the support phone number on the back of the card and select the "I've forgotten my pin" option, you then just need to key in the DOB of the cardholder to have the automated system read the PIN out to you over the phone which struck me as a fairly serious and incredibly bloody stupid security loophole. It'd probably be child's play for these teenagers (or anyone else who knows their DOB) to steal each others' money.

(Sidenote: I never actually managed to get Caxton to make the PIN work, so the card eventually got cut up and the initial £10 load chalked up to "learning exercise"...)

KDH_2

Eleanor62 wrote: »

She has an account with Nationwide and could use her card but that means 2% charge on purchases and 2% + £1 to withdraw cash :-(

?

So it's not a FlexOne account then?

http://www.nationwide.co.uk/products/current-accounts/flexone/whats-flexone

No charges on Visa debit card with either foreign cash withdrawals or foreign purchases .
(Also- No charges on foreign cash withdrawals with cash card option)

http://www.nationwide.co.uk/support/travel/fees-charges#tab:Feesandcharges

Can be opened by 11-17 year olds