Best Debit Cards and Banking Apps for Kids and Teens for March 2025

• Cost: $5.99, $9.98, or $14.98 per month
• Age requirements: None
• APY on savings: 2%, 3%, or 5%, depending on plan

Greenlight packs a ton of features into its kid debit card app, including transaction monitoring, spending controls, and chores and allowance management. It also offers the option to upgrade to plans that add investing, phone and identity theft protections, and even family safety monitoring. Though it requires a monthly fee, up to five children in your family can be included in the plan, and they can earn 2% to 5% on their savings, offsetting some of the monthly cost.

Starting a Greenlight plan for your child is really about the whole family. For a monthly subscription fee, Greenlight will provide a debit card for up to five children, all connected to a parent-controlled account. You can then monitor each of your children’s transactions, block certain merchants or spending categories, and track chores and pay allowances through the app. You can even turn the card off. Greenlight also offers a financial literacy game for kids called “Level Up,” teaching important lessons about money management. Greenlight’s Core plan rewards kids by paying 2% on their savings balances.

Upgrading to the Max plan offers even more features. The savings APY is bumped up to 3%, kids can earn 1% cash back on all their debit card purchases, and investing abilities are added for both kids and parents. Phone, purchase, and Identity theft protections are also included.

Greenlight’s top plan, Infinity, turns the app into a family safety service. It adds driving reports and alerts, crash detection, and family location sharing. It also boosts kids’ savings return to 5%.

Greenlight’s Core plan covers most bases for kid debit card apps for a reasonable fee. The middle and upper plans, meanwhile, turn it into a comprehensive powerhouse of features, though the monthly fee might feel steep to some families, especially those with just one child using the plan. 

Based in Atlanta, Greenlight was established in 2014.

• Cost: None
• Age requirements: 13 to 17
• APY on savings: 0.10%

For parents looking for a more straightforward banking approach to their child’s money management, the Axos Bank First Checking account offers a debit card and checking account with no monthly maintenance fees or subscription costs. Though it pays almost no interest, it does reimburse ATM fees.

The Axos Bank First Checking account can be opened by a parent for any teen ages 13 to 17. This standard checking account comes with a debit/ATM card, and offers typical banking features with no monthly fee or subscription obligation, including direct deposit of a working child’s paycheck. Since it also reimburses ATM charges (up to $12 per month), this could be a completely fee-free account for both parents and kids, depending on how you use it.

The Axos Bank free mobile banking app isn’t as fully featured and wide-ranging as paid apps like Greenlight. Still, since the parent is a joint owner of the teen account, the app does allow parents to turn their teen’s debit card on or off and set automated alerts for various transaction types, providing some level of parental control.

One trade-off for this free account is that Axos pays close to zero interest on savings. Parents may therefore want to establish a savings account for their child at another institution.

Axos Bank was founded in 2000 under the name Bank of Internet USA, and is today headquartered in San Diego.

• Cost: $5 per month for 1 child, or $10 per month for 2-4 kids
• Age requirements: 6 to 18
• APY on savings: Set and paid by the parent

For parents who really want to instill the importance of saving into their kids, Acorns Early offers the opportunity for parents to set and pay the interest rate. That means you can incentivize your child with whatever savings rate you like (10%? 15%? 100%), and you can adjust it at any time. Acorns Early is also a good option for parents who already have an Acorns account.

Acorns Early is an attractive kid-based product for parents who already have an Acorns account of their own, particularly if they have Acorns Gold. It’s excellent for incentivizing kids to save, allowing parents to pay their child interest at whatever rate they choose. This means you could offer your child an interest rate of 10% or 15% to dramatize how much interest earnings can compound. Also, since parents can change their child’s interest rate any time they like, they can choose to establish certain “match periods,” during which kids are paid up to 100% on whatever they manage to sock away.

Acorns Early is the product of merging the adult Acorns platform with a previous kids’ debit card service called GoHenry. As a result, Acorns Early includes chore and allowance tracking, parental controls that allow you to set spending limits, get transaction alerts, or even turn the debit card off, and financial literacy lessons for kids.

The downside is that these features aren’t free. You’ll pay $5 to $10 per month for an Acorns Early subscription, depending on how many children you want to include. And the customizable interest rate you set for your child’s savings will come out of your own parental pocket. However, if you’re already an Acorns Gold member, which currently costs $12 per month, Acorns Early accounts for your kids are included in your plan.

Acorns was founded in 2012 and is based in Irvine, California.

• Cost: None
• Age requirements: 6–17, but best for 6–12
• APY on savings: 0.01%

As the nation’s largest bank, many American parents already bank with Chase. That alone can make Chase’s kids’ debit card account a winner for many families. Like other options, Chase First Banking pairs its debit card with chores and allowance tracking, as well as parental controls. It also charges no monthly fees.

For parents already part of the Chase customer family, the Chase First Banking debit card for kids could be an easy choice, especially for pre-teen kids. The account charges no monthly fees or subscription costs, and offers parents a way to monitor their child’s transactions, limit where and how much they spend or withdraw from an ATM, and even manage chore assignments and allowance payments.

Because Chase has more than 5,000 physical branches in the country, this account can be a good option for families who want their child to have access to in-person banking. A wide network of Chase ATMs also exists across the bank’s multi-state territory.

In the negative column, however, Chase First Banking does not allow your child to have a paycheck directly deposited to their account. To do that, they would have to switch to the Chase High School Checking account, which is geared more to those ages 13–17. A Chase First Banking debit card cannot be linked to person-to-person payment apps like Zelle, Venmo, etc. The savings rate is also subpar, with Chase paying a near-zero 0.01% APY on savings balances.

• Cost: $3 per month (billed annually)
• Age requirements: None
• APY on savings: Set and paid by the parent

Kachinga’s modestly priced service offers a prepaid debit card with a money and chore management app where parents have complete control. The app allows parents to receive transaction notifications, instantly lock or unlock the card, and restrict spending on age-inappropriate categories or ATM use. Kachinga lets parents decide what interest rate to pay on their child’s savings, allowing for significant rewards for good saving behavior.

Kachinga, a chore app paired with a prepaid debit card, teaches kids about earning, saving, and spending money. Parents can set up chore charts or recurring allowances, and kids can track their earnings, spending, and savings through the app. The app also provides spending reports to help children learn about money management.

Kachinga offers extensive parental controls, including spending alerts, merchant blocking, and card locking. It even allows parents to set whether or not their child can make ATM transactions, and turn this on or off as they like.

While Kachinga does not charge any overdraft, inactivity, or reload fees, the service costs $3 per month (billed at $36 annually) per child, and ATM withdrawals incur a $2 fee. Still, for a child with little or no need for ATM access, Kachinga offers a full panel of parental controls for a cheaper price than its top competitors. The one-month free trial is also a nice feature for parents who would like to kick Kachinga’s tires before committing.

Kachinga was established in 2016 and is based in San Francisco.