GoHenry card - cautionary tale - my son spent £4,000 over less than 3 months

[VPC]

I got my 11 year old a GoHenry card a year or so ago to get him to understand how to earn money by setting him chores which would get remunerated from his account on which I had put some pocket money and how to save. My 11 year old ended up spending just short of GBP4,000 over 3 months on online gaming sites using his GoHenry card. I did not even know this was even possible. They did nothing to alert me. They say on their website that you can set spending limits and get notifications in real time. I did not realise this was happening as auto top up from my account was on and notifications were off. I was not even aware of those functions as they are not well advertised. I was made to think by their own advertising that this card was just a pocket money card, not a debit or credit card. I think the marketing and advertising of this company is misleading. They have refused all responsibility for what has happened as they said that it was up to parents to enable/disable those functions on the app and some kids do spend vast amounts on online gaming and therefore this triggered no alerts on their system. I feel a duty to warn other parents that this is a risk for children who do fall into these gaming website traps that a GoHenry card can easily be misused.

I've never had this problem. Get alerts when they spend anything. Have turned off the online spending. Set limits on what they can spend.
It's not the fault of GoHenry.

Parents don’t get a card with GoHenry. Just the kid gets a card. Parent gets an app to control transferring the money, kid gets an app which only shows balance and any chores/tasks they have to complete. It is impossible for the child to access any extra money once they have spent what the parent has transferred. Literally impossible.
Money can be transferred by going into the parent app and sending money to the child, so OP has given her son the parent app and he has been transferring money to himself.

@LimeViewer with GoHenry there is no parent card, just the kids card. There are two versions or modes of the app, parent and child. The child one is just to allow the child to access their balance, savings, and any other targets the parents set. There's no way the child app can allow the child to access the parents actual bank account or to transfer money from it.

Sorry OP but your the parent off the child stop blaming anyone else. Your obviously totally unaware off what your son is upto online. Don't blame everyone else for your lazy parenting.

No, YOU are absolutely in the wrong and can't blame gohenry because you didn't pay attention to what your own child was doing online and with his debit card.

Our kids have gohenry cards, it's made obvious they are to be used as debit cards with online and cash withdrawals etc. You didn't set up the notifications correctly and didn't keep an eye on his spending.

Bullshit is bullshit.

I don't understand why anyone uses these cards. They cost money, have pitfalls like this which if your not careful could land you in trouble.

Especially when from 11 they can have a normal bank account which is free and they can't spend any money unless it's in the account.

Personally I would never use them as they are just a con, I don't see why any child under 11 would need a bank card anyway.

Let me guess-you don't monitor your son's mobile phone use either?

I don't see the point if setting him up with one of these sort of accounts as a teaching tool before he's deemed responsible for a proper account and then just leaving him to it.

If you were supposed to be using it as a sort of bridging account as you didn't think he was ready for an ordinary bank account then why weren't you looking at it with him?

I'm not surprised that GoHenry won't take responsibility!

Why aren’t you monitoring who your son is talking too online? How were they allowed to manipulate him into buying them gift cards? This worries me more than the money…

How can you expect your son to use the card responsibly when you haven't been responsible with it, either? It's not the company's fault.

"Children of 11 have no sense of the value of money" if you haven't taught them, sure! Sorry but no sympathy here, there are SO many missteps you have made to get to this point I don't even know where to begin, you really can't blame GoHenry (no I don't use them) it would have likely happened to any card you used.

So he is being manipulated online and you didn't know this either? Do you know if he is being groomed? Is there a possibility he has sent pictures of himself and he is being blackmailed?

OP I completely agree with you. Something pretending to teach kids about money should absolutely not have the facility for an 11 year old to be scammed with online.

Stop blaming the company. It's your fault you aren't watching what your 11yo is spending on. It's a prepay debit card. My kids have Starling ones and I get notifications on all their spends. This is similar to my own main account. I have actually got my details stolen once and scammers spending money from my debit account and I immediately turn off the card and reported it.

You really need to take control of your money unless you are so rich that £4k is like £4 to you.

You failed at checking only monthly statements. It's 2024 and you have apps. I have notifications for all my bank accounts to monitor any fraudulant spends. I also do a weekly check to see all the transactions in case I missed a notification. I don't have a lot of money so I keep an eye on them.
It feels like you are still working in the same way before banking apps where you only know your balance from the ATM or the phone, and wait for your monthly statement.

You absolutely need to be speaking to the bbc/itv/national papers on this.

People need to stop blaming op. If the card allowed it to happen, it's the card's fault!

Maybe op is ND. Stop being so judgmental!

But this can only have happened if the OP gave her son access to the parent side of the app! Why should GoHenry bear responsibility for that level of stupidity (assuming the whole thing isn’t completely made up anyway)?

It’s impossible, unless she gave the kid control of the adult account.

*SwordToFlamethrower · Today 10:17

You absolutely need to be speaking to the bbc/itv/national papers on this.*

Yes. That's a good idea. She can explain how her 11 year old was being manipulated online by other people and coerced into making in game Roblox purchases and how she never noticed that either.

Very much this. But to be fair they are heavily promoted. Every time I top up DD's parent pay for school, they try to push me to get one of their equivalent cards.

I can see that if you hadn't previously looked into the various teen bank accounts with debit cards and knew these were free, you could be persuaded to use a GH type card.

@VPC thank you for this thread - I had no idea

I think the point is that Go Henry aren't really aiming to teach kids to manage money. They are making money for go Henry. Otherwise lesson one would be don't pay for a pre-pay debit card when you can have a bank account for free which comes with a lot more protections.

Obviously the banks are in it to make money too, but at least they don't pretend they are just teaching kids about money. And they are regulated better.

That's the thing. The card didn't allow it to happen. OP either deliberately disabled every single protection feature the card comes with, or she gave full control of the parent app to her son, or the son did it himself behind his mother's back which would imply he's not the sweet ,innocent angel that she makes him to be who doesn't know that internet spends are real money.. This could've happened with any card. Would you blame barclays if the kid used his mother's card directly?