The ‘safe debit card’ for children that lost Bethan’s pocket money
They promise peace of mind – but how secure are they?
LURED by bright and breezy websites, child-friendly apps and celebrity endorsements, my children ditched their good, old-fashioned piggy banks last year and switched to new, all-singing, all-dancing children’s debit cards.
We chose Osper, a card that promises to help your child manage their pocket money in a digital age. It’s billed as a ‘completely safe and secure way to spend’ and has been endorsed by celebrities such as TV presenter Davina McCall.
What we hadn’t banked on was six months later discovering half of my 11-year-old daughter Bethan’s pocket money had been plundered from her account via one of the world’s biggest gaming communities for children — without a single one of us being any the wiser.
Just like its rival GoHenry, Osper is a pre-paid debit card for children aged eight to 18. It allows parents to upload their pocket money automatically each week and the child to withdraw cash from a cashpoint, pay by chip and pin — and, if parents switch on the facility, make purchases online.
It was launched in 2014 and backed by Davina McCall, who posted a video on her website saying: ‘There’s something about the app and the way it works and how simple it is that just feels safe. To me, that’s really important as a mother. It’s teaching me to relax a bit when it comes to finances and my children.’
GoHenry goes further and allows children aged six to 18 to make contactless payments in shops with the pre-paid card.
It also lets you set and tick off chores for your child, enabling them to earn more money each week.
The attraction is that children are not allowed to spend what they don’t have and there is no overdraft facility nor penalties on either card.
And unlike the bank accounts I grew up with, these pre-paid debit cards allow parents to view a child’s latest spending at any moment on mobile phone or computer apps, while setting savings goals.
They sounded like the perfect way to teach our children about managing money as cards rapidly replace cash everywhere from the corner shop to the railway station.
Another happy contrast with the traditional High Street bank is that Osper and GoHenry don’t require a child or parent to visit a branch to open an account.
They require less ID and are linked to an account monitored and controlled by the parent.
For example, with Osper there is no credit check and as long as the firm can find you on the electoral roll you do not need to provide photo ID or proof of address.
Osper is proud to claim you can sign up for a new card online in less than two minutes.
These accounts are big business. GoHenry has 165,000 subscribers in the UK and Osper says 30 cards are ordered every minute during busy times.
The firms make their cash through subscription fees. The parent pays, rather than the child — and services don’t come cheap.
For the Osper card, the fee starts at £1.50 per month per child rising to £3 per month per child for the premium service that lets you set goals and categorise spending.
GoHenry charges the parent £2.49 per child per month. Children are not rewarded with interest.
Osper and GoHenry proudly claim their cards are a safe and secure way to pay and manage your child’s pocket money.
Neither allows children to spend money in pubs, bars or gambling websites. And they allow a parent to turn online spending on and off via their own website. So how, despite all this belt-and-braces security, did my 11-year-old lose half of her pocket money?
We found £10 a month had been disappearing out of her account for six months to MovieStarPlanet.
This is an interactive website where children create an imaginary film star, choosing its clothes, hairstyle and so on. The website — which also has a mobile app — has more than 250 million registered children aged eight to 15 playing in 16 countries.
Bethan had tried it briefly months ago, so I felt certain she was the victim of fraud.
But shockingly, Osper made it incredibly difficult to get the card blocked. Each of the three times I called its office from Friday, May 27 — when we discovered the payments — to the following Monday, I was promised someone would ring back. The call never came. I eventually found the ‘turn off online spending’ feature on the Osper website myself.
If my bank had acted so slowly to fraud on my account, I’d have been furious. So how can Osper justify treating children like this?
Its founder and chief executive Alick Varma accepts the out-ofhours service we received wasn’t good enough.
He told me the company has put a clearer emergency process in place at its call centre. Soon you will be able to exchange messages with a member of staff while using its mobile phone app. And a new help section will be available in the app within three months.
It was just as difficult to tell MovieStarPlanet, as its ‘report a problem’ feature is hidden deep within the site.
I ended up quizzing MovieStarPlanet’s head of safety Vernon Jones to find out what happened.
He told me the company’s technical systems are designed to block any payments by children’s debit cards.
Mr Jones believes my daughter’s account was hacked by another user or her personal information was obtained somehow.
Children can sometimes be lured into giving their login details, passwords or bank details to strangers in a chat room or via an innocuouslooking email that arrives in their inbox, he says. However, Bethan is adamant that she did not give her details to anyone, so we have no obvious explanation for what happened in this case. Mr Jones conceded that though MovieStarPlanet monitors its systems for scams, keeping up with the pace of criminals is ‘an impossible task’.
The company is reviewing its complaints procedure and says it will be making it easier for children and adults to alert it to problems.
So, how do we protect our children and their pocket money as cash dies out?
I learned the hard way that as a parent, I need to look at my daughter’s account and check for fraud more regularly. I have also turned off online spending.
My children and I have agreed to make any online purchases together in future. My daughter’s pocket money has been refunded and all of us have learned a valuable lesson: while these debit cards look enticing, they are no replacement for good, old-fashioned parental vigilance and ground rules.