BillMyParents Reloadable Prepaid MasterCard Review
The BillMyParents® Reloadable Prepaid MasterCard® is designed to help parents and teenagers manage money in a cost effective way. Parents benefit by having control over their child’s spending. And teens benefit by avoiding the risk of losing cash and learning to manage money. Allowance can easily be added to the card, as can income a teenager earns from an employer.
Pros
- Teens cannot overdraft the account
- Easy and effective parental controls over how the card is used
- Accepted anywhere that takes debit MasterCard
- Instantly track spending and balances
- 30-day free trial
Cons
- $3.95 monthly maintenance fee
- Fees to load money onto the card
How it Works
Although the BillMyParents prepaid MasterCard is designed with teenagers in mind, it works very much like any other prepaid credit card. Money must be loaded onto the card before it is used. The card can be loaded with money in several ways:
- Transfer from a bank account
- Visa or MasterCard
- Debit card
The minimum load amount is $10, and the maximum load amount is $2,500. Once money is loaded onto the card, it can be used anywhere that accepts debit MasterCard.
How is the BillMyParents card different
The primary difference between the BillMyParents card and other prepaid cards is the parental controls. As with any prepaid card, your son or daughter cannot spend more than the amount of cash available on the card. But in addition, parents can monitor their child’s spending real-time through either email or text alerts whenever the card is used. Parents can also lock or unlock the card online at anytime. Parents can also set up an automatic allowance that gets loaded onto the card at whatever frequency you set.
BillMyParents Fees
When it comes to evaluating a prepaid credit card, fees are by far the most important factor. In the case of BillMyParents, the card falls somewhere in the middle of the cards we’ve reviewed in terms of cost. There are certainly some cards that will cost more, but there are also cards that will cost less (although without the parental controls offered by the BillMyParents prepaid MasterCard).
The following chart shows the primary fees, along with the terms of BillMyParent’s 30-day free trial offer:
Summary
- No credit checks & no credit risks
- Instantly lock & unlock the card
- Safer than cash with lost card protection
- Lower fees than bank cards
- Reloadable means easy allowances
- Family and friends can load it
- Use anywhere Debit MasterCard is accepted
- Lower fees than your bank cardApply Now!
Reviewed by Aaron Berger on June 4, 2011.
Just want point out that you have a typo in “Parents cannot also lock or unlock the card online at anytime.” It should be “Parents can also clock or unlock….”?
Thanks, Mark.
4 out of 5.
I don’t like the card’s fees.
Angie, that is the card’s biggest downside. Hopefully they will lower the fees over time.