<p>I looked around, and it seems that all credit cards are for 18 yo and up.</p>
<p>Do you know any card does not have age limitation?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>No. When we wanted our kids to have a credit card in hand for emergencies, we made them authorized buyers on our Visa. Unfortunately, sometimes their definition of an emergency was different from ours. Our definition did not involve pizza.</p>
<p>If a minor can convince a bank to issue a bank account, it’s not illegal, but very rare as the liability is too great to the bank. The minor can claim a non-capacity to contract (didn’t understand) and the minor would win and void all the contracts and get all the money back. An emancipated minor can contract and thus have a credit card in his own name.</p>
<p>Minors can have a debit card (both my kids do) with Visa logos, but they are limited to the money in their checking account and do not have overdraft privileges because swiping at Starbucks for $4 and being denied isn’t as embarrassing as a $15 overdraft fee.</p>
<p>Parents can make the child an authorized user of the parent’s account, but that doesn’t build credit for the child.</p>
<p>Look into “Bill My Parents”. It is like a debit card that is very “parent” friendly. We used this with our daughter when she was in camp. This year, she and I opened a checking account together, now she uses that debit card.</p>
<p>Amazon had a student card few years back. Google “student credit card” or open a new card for yourself and add your child. Have cc company to freeze the limit on that card let’s say at $500. This is what I have for my teen.</p>
<p>Bank of America offers a secured card, might they offer that to younger people? I’m not sure, that was my first card but I was older than 18 at the time. Since the “credit” is secured against a cash deposit they might be less strict. I didn’t love BOA and the card had an annual fee so I didn’t keep it very long, but I didn’t have any problems with it either.</p>
<p>I believe if you do find a credit card for someone under 18, you need an adult to cosign with you somehow as well. When my kids started driving (and were sometimes buying gas with my permission), I put them on one of my cards. When they turned 18, both started getting credit card offers from the bank where they have accounts. D1 got one later in her college years to start building credit before she graduated. D2 (college freshman) is still on mine, she uses it for purchases we have previously agreed are appropriate, and uses her debit card for her own purchases.</p>
<p>However, given recent card security issues and the fact that debit cards have fewer consumer protections than credit cards, I have been mulling over encouraging her to take one of the CC offers she is receiving. Honestly, I will probably have the bill come here and take care of paying it out of her checking (it is joint for us) until she graduates, then hand the reins of payment responsibility over to her (that is what I did with D1, and it worked out fine).</p>
<p>A few days ago D1 called me and said someone had gotten hold of her ATM card number and PIN and used it for two $500 transactions at an ATM! She saw the transactions that day on her bank account, called the bank, and they cancelled the card. She does not even have her PIN written down anywhere… seems like someone “skimmed” it when she used the ATM at some point (she said she never uses it for purchases, only at the ATM). I used to work in card security, and I found this very unsettling. She is a pretty reliable kid, so I believe her that she didn’t leave the card and PIN together in her wallet or something so someone could jot it down.</p>
<p>I can tell you what card to avoid. The American Express PASS card for teens. A TOTAL nightmare. They hold the funds that you transfer for at least 6 or 7 business days so getting funds to your teen in an emergency is just not possible. Their customer service department is a call center in India and the connection is so bad you can hardly hear a word when you have an issue. After 6 months of total aggravation we added an extra account onto our Wells Fargo accounts for our teenage child. They issued her a credit card and we can transfer funds to the card instantly. No fees so long as she maintains $500 in a savings account at the bank. Works for us really well.</p>
<p>Is that Wells card really a “credit” card if you are transferring funds to it? Probably some kind of pre-payment card, not an actual credit card. Consumer protections are stronger for credit cards (you have less financial liability if someone gets hold of it and starts using it). Also, some of those bank pre-paid cards start charging a significant fee if the card goes unused for a while (say, 6 months). They just charge it every month, and since you don’t really see a statement for the card you don’t even know it until they have drained the card’s value through fees.</p>
<p>^^^^
Actually you are correct. There is no line of credit attached to it but there is overdraft protection if she spends more than I have funded. I don’t have to worry about the card going unused!</p>
<p>But if someone gets hold of the card number and uses it, they likely can not only drain the funds you have put in, but possibly dip into the overdraft protection. And you may have no recourse… you should read that tiny fine print the bank sends out carefully so you know what your exposure is. With a credit card it is essentially $50 of exposure, period. I recognize the convenience of pre-paid cards and debit cards, but the large upswing in hacking incidents recently, we should all be thinking hard about what our risks are with the various products. Your bank sure isn’t going to tell you except in the depths of the legal paperwork.</p>
<p>Thanks for the information. My kids already got bank cards with visa logo, but they are just debit cards. </p>
<p>And it seems 18 will be the age when they will get a real credit card.</p>
<p>When my daughter was going on a sponsored trip to Europe they suggested VisaBuxx cards. I do think there was a small fee to put money on the card, but they wouldn’t allow overdrafts and they didn’t hold you liable in the event of theft/fraudulent charges. It worked out great for us and we used it long after her trip. It was a relief to put money on her card and let her go school clothes shopping on her own. </p>
<p>We added our kids to a card that we weren’t using for emergencies when they were college students. We set a limit on the cards that could cover plane, hotel , minor health and car emergencies. Both kids have been very responsible with it and always ask and let us know if any charges are made. As an added benefit, it also boosts rpthe or credit history, since we have had excellent credit. Am unaware of any CC avaiable to any person in US under 18, unless they have adult co-signer. </p>
<p>Both kids have obtained their own CCs after college, which they pay balance in full every month. None of us saw a need for their own CC before they have their own income and assets anyway. </p>
<p>Once our d’s turned 16 and began driving, we provided them with copies of one of our cc’s in their names. When older dd’s were 18 and 20 (freshman and junior in college) they applied for Wells Fargo visa cards which were approved with a low credit limit of, I think, $500. They had had accounts at WF since the age of 16. Both have been very responsible, using them somewhat minimally and always paying off their balance each month. D2 was very nervous about forgetting so she set up a couple of alerts that would come to both her phone and email to make sure she paid on time. She now has it set up that her bill is paid automatically from her checking account each month. I don’t know if/when they’ll need credit but I think they’ll have established a nice, if minimal, history when the time comes.</p>
<p>I know the original question was whether or not a cc could be obtained before the age of 18. It seems doubtful but asking where the student or even OP banks and requesting a low limit are the only recommendations I have. D3 will leave for college when she’s still 17 and it’d be nice if WF allowed it but I haven’t asked yet. </p>
<p>That VisaBuxx card is the one that starts running fees when you don’t use it… so when your kid “grows out of it” financially, make sure she uses up the balance and you close the card.</p>
<p>We put our older daughter on one of our cards when she and her younger sister were going on a band trip to Europe. They also had their debit cards. Younger D was added when she started driving and would go to the grocery store for us. It was, to us anyway, the ideal solution. Older D will probably get her own cc this year, now that she’s earning some money and can pay it off monthly.
I’d rather they learned to control spending first via a checking account rather than get used to a cc for everyday spending. So far it’s worked.
Since they have to clear emergency use with us first, there’s an education on what cc’s should be used for. (As PP noted, pizza is not an emergency.)</p>
<p><a href=“http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/19/news/economy/student_credit_cards/”>http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/19/news/economy/student_credit_cards/</a></p>
<p>In 2009 they passed the credit card act which has made it more difficult for those under 21 to get a card on their own.</p>
<p>When our kids were still in high school we added them to our American Express account and AE sent them each their own cards in their names. They used the cards when we told them to stop at the grocery store and pick up x, when daughter called and said “Can I get my hair cut at the mall (and will you pay)?”, when we wanted them to drive one of our cars into town so they could fill it with gas for us, etc. I wish I would have got one sooner. So much less keeping track of what I “owed” them after that and obviously, I got a lot of “favors” out of them (which they were generally happy to do because they loved having the cards). </p>
<p>They also knew that the card could be used in emergencies and I was able to put a spending limit (both a one charge and a monthly limit) on each of their cards. </p>
<p>The major upshot of getting them their own AE card though is that since AE uses a unique credit card number for each cardholder (even though it is technically all in one account in dh’s name), they each have a credit history (which is excellent since we “paid as agreed” all of their charges every month. </p>