4 Best Greenlight Alternatives [Cards for Kids & Teens]

Best Greenlight Alternatives—Top Picks

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What Are the Best Greenlight Alternatives to Consider?

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Below, we’ve compiled a list of the best alternatives to Greenlight that should work for your needs. Not all are prepaid or paid card options, so look at each and compare which one makes the most sense for your needs.

 

1. Copper Card

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• Available: Sign up here
• Price: 30 days free. Copper $4.95/mo., Copper + Invest: $7.95/mo.

Copper Banking was founded on the belief that kids and teens should have equal access to financial education and should be empowered to learn by doing. Now, the company is on a mission to help children gain real-world experience by giving them access to their money in a way that traditional banks can’t.

The Copper app and debit card teaches your child how to make smart financial decisions by creating a platform where parents and their kids can connect. With the Copper app, you get easy snapshots of your accounts. And with the Copper Debit Card, it’s easy to shop in-store or online, including with Apple Pay or Google Pay.

Plus, users get exclusive access to engaging advice curated by a team of financial literacy experts who provide tips on how to take control of their financial future.

Copper Banking Features:

• Send/Request: Kids and parents can easily send and receive money all at the touch of a button.
• Spend: Spend using Apple or Google Pay, or using the Copper Debit Card.
• Withdraw: Access your money from more than 55,000 fee-free ATMs.
• Monitor: Get a snapshot of all your child’s spending in an easy-to-read dashboard.
• Save: Gain quick snapshots of your kid’s savings and helpful tips on how to save even more. Set up savings buckets and save for the things that you want.
• Learn: With the help of Copper’s team of financial literacy experts, gain bite-sized tips on how you can maximize your money and prepare yourself for your financial future.

The basic Copper account includes the above banking features. With Copper + Invest, your child also gets access to automatically curated smart portfolios built with their preferences in mind. Your child is given a questionnaire that helps Copper determine a portfolio based on their age, income, net worth, investment objective(s) and investment horizon. Copper then recommends one of three ETF portfolios—Moderately Aggressive, Aggressive, and Extra Aggressive—made up of thousands of stocks. Parents can review the portfolio to ensure it matches with not just your child’s preferences, but your family’s. (Portfolios can be changed later on by accessing the Support chat.)

Your child can begin investing for as little as $1, then add more contributions down the road. Copper will automatically rebalance the portfolio as needed to make sure it always keeps up with your child’s investment preferences.

Copper is available to kids 6 years and older.

 

2. GoHenry

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• Available: Sign up here
• Price: 1 month free. Individual: $4.99/child/mo. Family: $9.98/mo. for up to 4 children

GoHenry is a financial solution for minors that competes with Greenlight. It includes an app, prepaid debit cards, and even financial lessons. Parents are given an online account that’s linked to, and allows them to oversee and manage, individual accounts for each of their children via both the GoHenry app and the online account portal.

Each child will receive their own GoHenry debit card; you can choose from 45 different designs or create your own customized card for $4.99. Each card is governed by parental controls you can set for your children.

What’s nice about GoHenry is that kids can only spend whatever money is available on the card—and thus parents don’t need to worry about costly overdraft fees or their kids accruing debt.

When you open a GoHenry account, you should receive your children’s debit cards in the mail seven to eight business days later. Once you do, you can set up events such as automatic weekly allowance transfers into your children’s accounts, real-time spending alerts, and one-off or weekly spending limits. You can also keep your children’s spending in check by choosing the stores where your kids can shop, and even blocking/unblocking the card as needed.

With time, the controls provided by the app and the guidance you offer can help your kids develop good money habits around earning, saving, spending, and giving.

But the GoHenry card really sticks out as one of the best debit cards for kids for customer service in our testing. When we checked with their customer service, they offered everyday phone availability, email access, and social media engagement, ensuring users can solve their problems quickly and with little hassle. One small nit we found was reduced hours of customer service representative availability compared to our last annual check when they offered 24/7 support. Still, the customer service was found to be admirable in our estimation.

GoHenry has no minimum age requirements but recommends starting at age 6 or older.

 

3. Revolut <18 (Best for Parent-Paid Bonuses)

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• Available: Sign up here
• Price: No monthly fees

The Revolut <18 Card is a prepaid debit card for teens designed to teach them money skills for life. Aimed at building healthy money habits from an early age, the unique, customizable card empowers parents to have full insight into their teens’ card activity through providing instant spending alerts and parental controls.

You can choose to freeze the card, set controls on how they use the cards online and with contactless payments through your Revolut app. Further, you can set spending limits on how much your teen can use with the prepaid card.

Parents use the card and accompanying app to teach teens about earning, budgeting, saving and even investing money (depending on the plan chosen). You can also use the card to manage chores and allowance, set savings goals as a family and help your children manage their money.

And if your teenager did something deserving of a reward? You can send parent-paid bonuses when they complete specific tasks. Simply add money to their digitized piggy bank through the app. You can send and receive money in seconds through Revolut’s Payments feature, which allows instant transfers between account holders and also global transfers at transparent rates.

Of note: You must have a personal Revolut account before you can open a Revolut <18 account for your teen. You can add up to five Revolut <18 accounts per parent account.

IMPORTANT: You must have a personal Revolut account before you can open any Revolut <18 accounts. When you click our link, you will be directed to a page that will allow you to sign up for a personal Revolut account. Once you have done so, you can begin opening Revolut <18 accounts for your children. You can add up to five Revolut <18 accounts per personal account.

To learn more about the Revolut <18 card, consider visiting their site and opening an account for yourself and your teen.

 

4. FamZoo

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• Available: Sign up here
• Price: Free trial. Then $5.99/mo., $25.99/6 mos., $39.99/12 mos. or $59.99/24 mos. (all per family)

FamZoo is another service for parents interested in opening prepaid debit cards to manage their children’s spending.

Parents can fund a FamZoo account through numerous routes, including bank transfers, Direct Deposit, even cash. Typically, parents will load their primary funding card, then they will transfer those funds onto their kids’ cards. But you do have the option of directly funding kids’ cards.

There are plenty of safety features, too. And there’s no risk of having your bank account information stolen from FamZoo—because FamZoo never asks for it. Adults can monitor transactions, you can temporarily lock and unlock cards, and you can set up real-time alerts for card activity and remaining balances.

After a free trial, this app costs $5.99 per month, but the price goes down if prepaid in advance.

However, FamZoo rates as our top education choice because of its robust financial education library. Many of the functions have financial literacy in mind, too. For instance, payment checklists teach kids the value of a dollar by tying chores and odd jobs to rewards and penalties.

Spend, Save, and Give accounts separate funds into different purposes. And with “Parent-Paid Interest,” you can teach your kids the power of compound interest over time.

FamZoo has no minimum age requirements but recommends starting earlier rather than later.

 

Best Alternatives to Greenlight

When it comes to prepaid debit cards for teens and kids, there are few brands as well known as Greenlight card. From its low monthly fee, to its feature-filled product offering or its ease of use, Greenlight is a great option for parents looking to teach their children about responsible financial habits and how money works in the real world.

However, just because Greenlight stands atop the debit card for kids market doesn’t mean it is always your best choice. Other prepaid cards offer similar features at different price points better adjusted to your needs and situation. So, if you don’t want your child using a Greenlight card right out of the gate, there are several Greenlight alternatives that might be better suited to your needs!

What Are Prepaid Debit Cards for Kids?

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A prepaid card is a type of payment card that can be loaded with funds in advance and then used to purchase goods or services without incurring debt from the issuer. The most common type of prepaid cards is a prepaid debit card (which acts like making bank account withdrawals when purchasing goods and services).

Prepaid cards for a child allow you to avoid non-sufficient funds fees or overdraft charges because they can only spend what they have on the card.

What Is the Greenlight Debit Card for Kids?

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The Greenlight app offers a feature-filled financial platform meant to help parents teach their kids important personal finance skills and build useful money habits including how to save, earn, invest, spend and give money responsibly. The Greenlight app and prepaid card function as a purpose-built solution for families to learn about money through use of a prepaid debit card with parental controls, notifications and safety features.

Further, the Greenlight prepaid card and app offers a parent account for establishing chore plans and administering weekly allowance payments for successful completion of assigned tasks.

From there, parents can show their kids how to use the included investing platform (on a higher plan through Greenlight Max) to invest in stocks for kids and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). This can show real-life lessons of compound interest and encourage children to save and invest funds regularly.