Allowances for Teens in a Mobile Wallet World

As we move even closer to a cashless society, parents are hunting for new ways to distribute their teen’s allowance. There are plenty of allowance prepaid cards on the market today designed specifically for children to use.

But what about mobile wallets? Most of these allowance-friendly prepaid cards are not designed to work with Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and other mobile wallets teens want to use. Teenagers want an all-in-one solution, where they simply carry their phones with them to cover all of their financial needs.

Using a prepaid card on a mobile wallet is a little complicated. Since mobile wallets work directly with banks and card providers, it is possible that some prepaid cards will work on a mobile wallet, even if it is not listed as a compatible card on the website. However, Samsung Pay provides this disclaimer on their compatible cards page: “Some cards from participating banks may not be supported in Samsung Pay. Contact your bank for more information.” It is almost impossible to know if a specific card will work with a specific mobile wallet without testing it in person.

Current, an allowance prepaid card provider, just announced their prepaid cards will now work with Apple Pay. In their press release, the company said, “When we asked teens what we could add to Current to make it better the near universal answer was Apple Pay.”

The addition of Apple Pay is certainly convenient, but parents should carefully monitor how their teens use their allowances through this mobile wallet. With the development of Apple Pay Cash, Apple users can now send money to one another through iMessage. If teens want to send money to a friend, they can do that with a Current card. Parents must determine if that is an approved use of money, or if restrictions must be enforced for how the allowance is spent.