YES - Claire Whyley, deputy director of policy, National ConsumerCouncil.
First of all, they are expensive, and secondly, developing a plastichabit early on in life could predispose young people to using creditcards later on without understanding they will have to pay back whatthey spend. By marketing such cards through magazines like this, youngpeople's love of brands and trendy new things is being exploited.Decisions about whether to use plastic in this way should be takenindependently of whether there is "street cred" attached.
NO - Mark Kennedy, chief executive, Bluecorner, a card issuer
Before we developed Splash cards, children only had a couple of optionswhen it came to pre-payment cards and they were outrageously expensive.They can get Solo cards but these carry the risk of going overdrawn,which happened to my daughter, because they allow you to carry outoff-line transactions. You cannot perform off-line transactions withSplash cards, they are safer than carrying cash and can be topped up byparents wherever their children are in the world. The cards also teachyoung people to deal with plastic.
YES - Arif Khan, 16
In my opinion pre-payment cards are a bad idea as it gets young peopleinto bad spending habits at a early stage. Debt is already a big problemfor young people, especially when they go to university. This, coupledwith them being used to plastic from an early age may result in themhaving mounting debts with conventional credit cards. People will arguethat it is a safer way to carry money, but young people are more likelyto spend this money rather than save it as it feels lighter on thepocket coming from a card than hard cash.
NO - Andy Hibberd, director, The Parent Organisation
It's not a bad idea to get children used to buying with plastic. Not allplastic is credit cards, a lot of it is debit cards. It's probably saferthan having children walking the streets with pocket money as long asthe proper checks are in place, like chip and pin or a signaturerequired.
If parents are the ones putting in the money, then, in effect, it's justlike them giving pocket money. If the cards were store specific it couldeven be a way for parents to have more control over their children'sspending.
