Teens and pre-paid travel cards

[weederley]

DS (15) is going abroad with a sports team and I was thinking of giving him a pre-paid currency card. Various press articles recommend these for teenage travellers. Problem is, they can't seem to have one in their own name until they're 18, so I would need to get one in my name and give it to him. But the terms and conditions of the first card I've looked at say it shouldn't be given to someone else, and I'm guessing others will be the same. I suppose people do it anyway, but what if something goes wrong e.g. the card is stolen, or a sales person in a shop suspects it's not their card because of the name being different? AIBU to worry about this?

He can open a current account at Nationwide and then use that card abroad.
There are special cards you can use - dd went to a big event last Summer where everyone is under 18 and everyone had cards of one sort or another.
I'll try and think of the main one that was recommended.

Thanks backforgood. He does have a Nationwide FlexOne account, but the card for that can"t be used abroad. Which NWide account did you mean?

Sorry, don't remember the detail now - dd has since turned 18 and we have been changing all her accounts over - but hers was her normal current account that she used in this country.
We went in to branch and double checked, and also triple checked by going on the website and all was fine.
We just emptied her account except for about £70, then she could WhatsApp us if she needed anything else put into the account - just in case anything did go wrong, there wasn't too much to lose.

Just ask them.

Or this is what a quick internet search threw up

I've just had this dilemma with DD1, exacerbated by insurance for under 16s only covering £50 cash... on a policy that has a £50 excess . Having spent hours looking into options, I discounted the Osper card she usually uses and has used when in Europe and ended up opening a teen account with Natwest. There are a couple of local branches so it's easy for her to pop in after school if need be but most of the banking is done via an app. We requested a card that doesn't do contactless so as to minimise money lost if the card were to go AWOL. She had to go into the bank to let them know she'd be using it in the US so it wouldn't be flagged up as suspicious. I then paid the money she'd saved into her new Natwest account safe in the knowledge it wouldn't be possible for her to overspend but also that it would be easy (and free) to do an online transfer to her in an emergency situation.

We knew there would be a charge for withdrawing cash but she only needed to do so once and made sure she was taking out a reasonable amount (and storing some in the hotel safe so she wasn't carrying it all around). It worked well and means she now has a regular bank account to run as she pleases (in addition to savings and the Osper).