MeCard Pre Paid Card Review
The MeCard is a pre paid card designed for use by teenagers, but backed by their parents. It is designed to allow teens to learn to manage their money online.
The MeCard can be owned by anyone age 13 or above, and is designed in such a way that you get 24 hour access to your account online where you can see transactions and balance, you can add credit to your PAYG mobile phone from your MeCard with a single text, and you can be sent money by mum or dad, or even by friends and family on your birthday or other special occasions.
The MeCard looks and feels very much like a debit card, and functions in much the same way using chip and pin technology. The difference is that with this card, you must pre-load money onto it before you can spend anything, so there’s no way you can go overdrawn.
Because the MeCard is designed for teen use, money can be sent from a registered parent MeCard to the teen MeCard by a simple text. This allows parents to hold money on a parent card and then send it to their child’s card easily. This means that if you wish to let your child have money in a controlled way, or only on pocket money day you can. It also means that if your teen goes away on holiday, or a school trip, or perhaps when they first go off to university, they can text you if they have urgent cash needs, and you can text cash back to them.
Because the MeCard IS aimed at teens, it comes with a few features you wouldn’t get with most pre-paid cards. For a start, it has its own MeCard page on facebook and twitter that MeCard owners can sign up to. MeCard members also get special access to concerts and other events and discounts on all sorts of things from online games to clothes, shoes and even everyday things like books for college etc.
Of course there are some fees associated with the card like there are with all pre-paid cards, such as loading fees, however on the MeCard because you have a parent card and a teen card it works slightly differently.
The Parent card has a minimum loading amount of £10, and a maximum of £500 at PayPoint and Post Office, £300 online by debit card, £3,000 by BACS or wages transfer, and its maximum balance is £3,000.
The Teen card can ONLY be loaded from a parent card. The maximum money share (i.e. the amount passed from the parent card to the teen card in one transaction) is £500 and the maximum balance is £500.