Debit card for minor (< 8 y.o.)
It seems the age restriction for the Capital One MONEY account has been removed; I just read the entire terms and conditions and there's no minimum age requirement. I just finished opening Capital One MONEY accounts for a child who is <5 and a child <8. Both now have activated debit cards and online access. Their accounts are accessible via their card, but also appear under my online banking login, as they are joint accounts. It is possible to deposit cheques, but no cheques are issued for writing. Debit card access is provided for ATM withdrawals and purchases. And the design on the card is really nice; my son said it looks like the $100 bill. In the UK, the Osper card would do the trick exactly. The closest thing I can find in the US is the USAA Youth accounts which appear to be what you need but have some restrictions on mobile access until the youth is 13. You might consider a Green Dot card. You can personalize the name on the card. There is no risk of over-drafting. There are some fees when you fill the card in stores, but it is free to open and manage online. Check out their site and see if it will work for you. It could be a great pair with a joint bank account for you and your kids. https://www.greendot.com/greendot/ Rock on for teaching personal finance and responsibility to your kids! I'm not certain if you can get a debit card with it, but if you have a PNC in your area, they have a special kind of account designed around teaching financial literacy to children: https://www1.pnc.com/sisforsavings/tour.html . I'm not sure if you can get a debit card for the child or not, but the custodian gets one I believe, and the child gets a special online login to manage the money, so if you don't mind the name issue, it might be worth looking into. If you don't have PNC, maybe one of the banks in your area have a similar program? "GreenLight offers a paid service for $5 per month that requires an adult primary account holder, and then unlimited accounts, including minors, as part of that service. I saw no minimum age requirement (see section ""Minors as Sub-Account Cardholders""). https://www.greenlightcard.com/index.html Disclaimer: I haven't tried this service"
The cost to the store is small. They may have to pay a slightly greater fee because the transaction is now bigger. They do need additional cash on hand. Even though the majority of transactions are electronic (credit/debit) or check, the local grocery store still seems to have significant cash on hand. This is seen as a customer service. If there is a 2% fee the $50 advance costs them $1 for the minority of customers that take advantage of it. After more than 10 years of doing this they have figured this into the cost of groceries. Of course the credit card company could also waive the fee to store. My credit card online statement does tell me how much cash back was received. The line says date, store, amount ($40.00 cash over and $123.45 purchases) $163.45 total. Therefore the credit card company knows that cash back was used. Many banks will allow you to open multiple accounts.  Create a secondary checking account that has no automatic withdrawals and doesn't allow overdraft.  This is the account you'll use for you discretionary spending.  Get an account with a debit card and always use it as a debit card (never as a credit card, even if it allows that). Your employer may allow you to split your direct deposit so that a certain amount of money goes into this account each month.  When it gets to $0, you have to stop spending.  It will automatically refill when you get your paycheck. "A credit card is a way to borrow money. That's all. Sometimes the loans are very small - $5 - and sometimes they are larger. You can have a credit card with a company (bank or whatever) that you have no other relationship with. They're not a property of a bank account, they are their own thing. The card you describe sounds exactly like a debit card here, and you can treat your Canadian debit card like your French credit card - you pay for things directly from your bank account, assuming the money is in there. In Canada, many small stores take debit but not credit, so do be sure to get a debit card and not only a credit card. Now as to your specific concerns. You aren't going to ""forget to make a wire."" You're going to get a bill - perhaps a paper one, perhaps an email - and it will say ""here is everything you charged on your credit card this month"" along with a date, which will be perhaps 21 days from the statement date, not the date you used the card. Pay the entire balance (not just the minimum payment) by that date and you'll pay no interest. The bill date will be a specific date each month (eg the 23rd) so you can set yourself a reminder to check and pay your bill once a month. Building a credit history has value if you want to borrow a larger amount of money to buy a car or a house, or to start a business. Unlike the US, it doesn't really have an impact on things like getting a job. If you use your card for groceries, you use it enough, no worries. In 5 years it is nice to look back and see ""never paid late; mostly paid the entire amount each month; never went over limit; never went into collections"" and so on. In my experience you can tell they like you because they keep raising your limit without you asking them to. If you want to buy a $2500 item and your credit limit is $1500 you could prepay $1000 onto the credit card and then use it. Or you could tell the vendor you'd rather use your debit card. Or you could pay $1500 on the credit card and then rest with your debit card. Lots of options. In my experience once you get up to that kind of money they'd rather not use a credit card because of the merchant fees they pay." "Circa 2002-2005, I was able to successfully ""transfer"" a balance from a debit card linked to a bank account to a Bank of America Visa credit card. As an example, I could say do a balance transfer from the card XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX (which was a valid debit card number) to the credit card, and the funds would appear in the checking account within a few days, and also the balance on the credit card would go up the amount plus any balance transfer fee. I think they've sealed off that loophole years ago." I'd imagine it is the same for an adult. The money probably gets withdrawn and that's it.  However, if the scammer were to go to a branch in person, I'd imagine there would need to be some sort of photo identification to withdraw money. If it were online, then the scammer would also need the account holder's username and password.  Either way, chances are that once the money is gone, it's gone - unless the scammer can be found. Even then, the scammer might not have that money anymore. I would recommend pre-paid debit cards. Every quarter a fixed amount of money is loaded onto the card (or a new card is issued). This prevents any large-scale fraud from occurring. My view is from the Netherlands, a EU country. Con: Credit cards are more risky. If someone finds your card, they can use it for online purchases without knowing any PIN, just by entering the card number, expiration date, and security code on the back. Worse, sometimes that information is stored in databases, and those get stolen by hackers! Also, you can have agreed to do periodic payments on some website and forgot about them, stopped using the service, and be surprised about the charge later. Debit cards usually need some kind of device that requires your PIN to do online payments (the ones I have in the Netherlands do, anyway), and automated periodic payments are authorized at your bank where you can get an overview of the currently active ones. Con: Banks get a percentage of each credit card payment. Unlike debit cards where companies usually pay a tiny fixed fee for each transaction (of, say, half a cent), credit card payments usually cost them a percentage and it comes to much more, a significant part of the profit margin. I feel this is just wrong. Con: automatic monthly payment can come at an unexpected moment With debit cards, the amount is withdrawn immediately and if the money isn't there, you get an error message allowing you to pay some other way (credit card after all, other bank account, cash, etc). When a recent monthly payment from my credit card was due to be charged from my bank account recently, someone else had been paid from it earlier that day and the money wasn't there. So I had to pay interest, on something I bought weeks ago... Pro: Credit cards apparently have some kind of insurance. I've never used this and don't know how it works, but apparently you can get your money back easily after fraudulent charges. Pro: Credit cards can be more easily used internationally for online purchases I don't know how it is with Visa or MC-issued debit cards, but many US sites accept only cards that have number/expiration date/security code and thus my normal bank account debit card isn't useable. Conclusion: definitely have one, but only use it when absolutely necessary. Typically, a direct debit is set up by the company who will be receiving the money, not by you or your bank. So you need to contact your credit card company, and ask them to set up the direct debit.