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Kids use cash cards to buy booze, porn
Filed under: Teens, Work Life, Places To Go, Gadgets
It seems that the ingenuity of kids wanting to get around the rules is still alive and well. Whatever new technology comes along, kids will put it to use to get into trouble. Take pre-paid "credit cards", for example. Sometimes called "cash cards" or "gift cards", these have become very popular for gift giving, lately. The recipient is able to get what they want for a gift, rather than getting what a well-meaning but clueless friend or relative thinks they want. Both Visa and Mastercard offer such cards and highlight the fact that they are accepted by any merchant that accepts traditional credit cards, online and off. The problem, however, is that it's easy enough for kids to get hold of these cards opening up a world of adult pleasures to them. A recent investigation in the UK found that children were easily able to obtain the cards on their own, purchase restricted items such as liquor and adult videos, and gain access to pornographic and gambling websites.
Visa prefers to focus on the positive aspects of the cards. "They introduce children to the financial world, start to teach them about financial discipline," said a spokesman. I'm not sure there's any way to solve the problem, other than to make sure parents know what their kids are ordering.
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
8-20-2007 @ 3:02PM
Wendy said...Of course VISA and Mastercard want to only focus on the positive aspects of the cards. They have future debtors to train into the thinking that they are not spending actual money.
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8-20-2007 @ 5:04PM
caitlin said...Legacy programming in action! In the early days of e-commerce, having a credit card or checking account in your name was proof of being an adult, since it was very rare for someone under 18 to have either.
With gift debit cards, it obviously doesn't hold true anymore. I'm kind of (but not really) surprised they haven't implemented a flag on gift debit cards that can mark them for minor use. But it would mean that a fair amount of credit card processing software would have to be rewritten to accommodate that.
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