News: Apple Pay Makes Children's Debit Card App Safer & Easier

Parents rejoice, Apple Pay is making it much simpler for your kid to use Greenlight, the MasterCard for kids app.

The goal of Greenlight is to prepare kids for the world of financial independence while making it as safe as possible for them. Parents are able to monitor and control what their kids spend on the card and where. They can send money automatically from anywhere if they approve a purchase and can set up the exact stores where their children are allowed to buy things from.

Now, the app is even safer and easier thanks to Apple Pay because everything they need is on their smartphones. No longer do kids have to carry around their debit cards and risk losing them or someone stealing them.

All they have to do is set up Apple Pay and link it with the app on their iPhone which can be found in their Wallet App. This can give parents reassurance that payments by smartphone are entirely private. It also gets rid of always remembering to carry around the card. About the update, Tim Sheehan, CEO and co-founder of Greenlight Financial Technology Inc. said:

Young people are leading the way in paying for things using their mobile phones, so we're pleased to enable Apple Pay for Greenlight customers.

The addition of this feature should help Greenlight compete with Visa's similar app, Current. This app already utilizes Apple and allows you to send payments through messenger. With no feature like that existing for Greenlight, it seems like it was time for them to step into the world of Apple, though they did have the advantage of coming out first.

Another update to the Greenlight app is that it is now available internationally in over 120 countries. Sheehan said that this is to ease the minds of parents who have children traveling on school trips or go on international family vacations.

So if you have a child or know a child who could benefit from learning how to responsibly, and safely handle money, Greenlight might be the app for you.

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