Joanne Jacob's latest entry on FoxNews Views (where she mentions N2P - yay!) has this link to new credit cards - for the preteen set:
"Freedom! You can use the Hello Kitty Debit MasterCard to shop 'til you drop," the card's Web site enthuses. The prospective audience? The young women who grew up with the 30-year-old icon -- as well as much younger girls. "We think our target age group will be from 10 to 14, although it could certainly go younger," said Bruce Giuliano, senior vice president of licensing for Sanrio Inc., which owns the brand.
Since only parents (or at least anyone older than 18) can sign up for the card, Hello Kitty thinks it's a great way for adults to "help teach their children how to manage their finances," Giuliano said. Next up, he added, is a prepaid Hello Kitty cell phone...
The Visa Buxx card allows parents to put money on a child's account and then monitor his or her purchases, as they occur as well as at the end of each month. On Visa Buxx and Hello Kitty cards, teens can only spend the amount on the card; they cannot go into debt by going over their spending limit.
McKinley estimates there are about 100,000 Visa Buxx cardholders. Visa's Bentz wouldn't provide any numbers, but she said card users were increasing by 4 to 8 percent a month. Half the cardholders are ages 13 to 15; the rest are 16 or older, she said.
"It's no different than an allowance; just a safer way to manage an allowance because if you're a parent, you can find every place your daughter spent her money: how much, when and where," Klamka said. "You get a higher level of control than just giving your daughter $100 and say, 'Go to the mall.' "
I love Joanne's succinct reply:
I achieved an even higher level control by never giving my daughter $100 to go to the mall.
Seriously. I don't recall going to a mall unsupervised between the ages of 10 and 14, much less being given money in addition to my allowance for spending. How is it "control" to give your daughter a card (with fees described by one insider as the worst they'd ever seen) and let her go shopping unsupervised?
Posted by kswygert at October 11, 2004 09:08 PM