Revolut <18 vs. GoHenry [Which Card is Better?]

Parenting involves a delicate balance of letting your children make their own decisions while preventing any catastrophes. You might let your kids choose what to eat for dinner, but veto ice cream being the entire meal.

A kids’ debit card is an excellent way to let your child make financial decisions, but within reason. But, since you’ve found your way to this article, you’re likely sold on the idea of a kids’ debit card and just can’t figure out if Revolut <18 or GoHenry is a better option.

I’m here to help.

Today, I’m going to provide detailed looks into each card. After an overview, I’ll outline the costs, noteworthy features, and more. Just in case neither card seems like the perfect fit for your family, I’ll also highlight a few other highly competitive debit cards worth consideration.

Revolut <18 vs. GoHenry Comparison

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Revolut <18 Overview

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• Available: Sign up here

The Revolut <18 Card is a prepaid debit card for kids designed to teach them money skills for life. Aimed at building healthy money habits from an early age, the unique, customizable card empowers parents to have full insight into their kids’ card activity through providing instant spending alerts and parental controls.

Parents can choose to freeze the card, as well as set controls on how kids use the cards online and with contactless payments through the Revolut app. Further, parents can set spending limits on how much the kids can use with the prepaid card.

Parents can also use the card and accompanying app to teach kids about earning, budgeting, and saving. The Revolut <18 Card can also be used to manage chores and allowance, set goals as a family, accelerate funds with round-ups, and help children manage their money.

And if your kid did something deserving of a reward? You can send parent-paid bonuses when they complete specific tasks. Simply add money to their digitized piggy bank through the app. Your teen can send and receive money in minutes through Revolut’s Payments feature, which allows fast transfers between Revolut <18 teenage users.

IMPORTANT: You must have a personal Revolut account before you can open any Revolut <18 accounts. When you click our link, you will be directed to a page that will allow you to sign up for a personal Revolut account. Once you have done so, you can begin opening Revolut <18 accounts for your children. You can add up to five Revolut <18 accounts per personal account.

Revolut <18 is designed for children between the ages of 6-17.

Related: Best Investing Apps for Teens [Stock Trading Apps]

Revolut Costs

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Revolut <18 is a no-monthly-fee prepaid debit card, so you won’t have to pay any additional monthly fees.

However, parents must have a personal account first, and there are three different tiers for adult accounts. Every account allows you to create up to five <18 accounts.

While Revolut <18 has no monthly fee, in some situations, users might incur small fees.

Card delivery fees, replacement fees, and customization fees are the same for your Revolut <18 card as the tier of the parent’s Revolut account. Revolut doesn’t charge Revolut <18 users ATM fees, whether that’s at in- or out-of-network ATMs (though it also doesn’t reimburse users for third-party ATM fees). And if you plan on traveling, note that a high-frequency fee will apply for any foreign exchange over $325 on each individual Revolut <18 account per rolling month.

Related: Best Debit Cards for Teens

Revolut Features

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Revolut Card

The Revolut <18 card is a prepaid debit card that is contactless and easy to use. Because it’s a Visa, it’s usable the world over—Visa is accepted in more than 200+ countries worldwide. You can also use the card to withdraw cash from more than 55,000 in-network ATMs—without any fees!

The card can also connect to Apple Pay or Google Pay (for users who are old enough), so forgetting the card isn’t an issue as long as your teen has their smartphone with them. Better still, cardmembers can use their virtual cards before their physical cards even show up if they are old enough to add the card to Apple/Google Pay.

Revolut <18 cards are extremely customizable. Users can add text and emojis, or even make their own custom drawings on it. A fee may be charged if your teen customizes the card.

The Revolut <18 card is also protected by Visa’s Fraud Protection and Zero Liability guarantee. That means if your teen’s card gets lost or stolen, and fraudulent charges crop up, you can dispute the charges within a certain time frame to avoid liability for paying.

Transfers to Friends (Ages 13+)

From time to time, friends need to give each other money, whether they’re splitting the cost of a meal out or giving someone gas money for driving them around. Revolut <18 makes it easy for friends to send money back and forth—and users can even add notes and gifts to transfers to make the exchange more fun.

Goals

Revolut <18 motivates kids to stash away money toward their goals. Kids can keep funds separate from their spending money so they’re not tempted to use it. They can also set goals, then watch the progression meter move as they add more money toward their goal.

Round-Ups

Revolut <18 further encourages adding money faster with round-ups. With this feature, small purchases are rounded up to the nearest dollar figure, and that extra money is put toward their goals.

Allowance + Paid Tasks

No need to give your kids IOUs on allowance—you can pay it directly through Revolut <18 with weekly automated payments.

Want to motivate your child to complete their chores, practice their instrument, or do their homework? Nothing motivates quite like cash. You can create paid challenges and assign specific dollar amounts to them. Once a kid completes a challenge, the payment is released.

Parental Controls

Revolut <18’s parental controls help ensure your child doesn’t go overboard on spending.

For one, you can set up monthly spending limits. You can also enable and disable transactions by type: swipe payments, contactless payments, online transactions, and ATM withdrawals.

You can also elect to receive instant spending alerts. And if necessary, you can freeze the card at any time.

You can sign up for Revolut <18 here.

GoHenry Overview

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• Available: Sign up here

I view GoHenry as more than just a way for kids to spend—it’s a holistic financial solution for minors.

GoHenry includes an account, prepaid debit card, app, even financial lessons. Parents are given an online account that’s linked to, and allows them to oversee and manage, individual accounts for each of their children via both the GoHenry app and the online account portal.

Kids can only spend whatever money is on the card, so parents don’t have to worry about costly overdraft fees or their kids running up a debt. Plus, it comes with some parental controls.

But GoHenry really sticks out to me as one of the best prepaid debit cards for kids because of their customer service. They offer everyday phone availability, email access, and social media engagement, ensuring users can solve their problems quickly and with little hassle.

GoHenry has no minimum age requirements but recommends starting at age 6 or older. Your child will be able to do plenty with the card from the onset—and plenty more as they grow up to be teens. Not only can they receive an allowance, but they can also get paid by employers through their account. They can use that money to reach savings goals or shop within the limits you’ve set. Your teen can even receive money from (or send money to) friends!

With time, a combination of your parental guidance and the app’s features should help your kids develop good money habits around earning, saving, spending, and giving.

Users should know that the company was acquired in 2023 by Acorns—a popular investing app for young adults who invest spare change through Round-Ups and recurring investments. However, for now, it still operates as GoHenry, and as of this writing, I’ve seen no announced changes that would suggest it will stop operating as normal. (In fact, Acorns actually offers GoHenry for free when you sign up for its Premium plan.)

Related: 7 Best Teen Checking Accounts [Bank Accounts for Teenagers]

GoHenry Plans + Costs

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GoHenry offers a one-month free trial, then two pricing options, depending on the number of children:

GoHenry accounts don’t charge transaction fees nor foreign transaction fees. It’s also free for friends to instantly send money to your child.

GoHenry is one of the few cards that does not have a fee-free ATM network, however, so you’ll incur third-party fees at virtually every ATM.

You can customize debit cards at a cost of $4.99 each.

Related: 11 Best Debit Cards for Kids

GoHenry Features

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Below, I’ve listed a number of GoHenry’s most prominent features. Many of them are designed to keep kids and teens happy, but others help parents keep an eye on their children’s spending.

GoHenry Card

The GoHenry card is a Mastercard-branded prepaid debit card that can be used anywhere Mastercard is accepted.

Parents load their parent account via a linked debit card or credit card, though GoHenry doesn’t allow you to fund via American Express. Parents load their children’s GoHenry cards from the parent account.

Each child can choose from 45 different GoHenry debit card designs or create a customized card for $4.99. When you open a GoHenry account, you should receive your children’s debit cards in the mail seven to nine business days later.

ATM charges are a weak spot here. While many kids’ debit cards have fee-free ATM networks, GoHenry does not. GoHenry itself won’t charge your child for withdrawing money from an ATM, they will incur a third-party fee from virtually any ATM. GoHenry caps ATM withdrawals to $120 per day and $480 within four days, as well as three withdrawals in one day and four within four days.

The card offers chip and PIN-protected transactions, bank-level encryption, and secure PIN recovery through the app. Cardholders also benefit from Mastercard Zero Liability Protection. This means you and your child aren’t held responsible for any unauthorized transactions as long as you used reasonable care to protect the card from loss or theft and promptly reported any fraudulent charges to GoHenry.

Parental Controls

GoHenry offers a few parental controls to ensure children are using their debit cards responsibly, including:

• Spending overviews
• Real-time spending alerts
• Single-transaction and/or weekly spending limits
• ATM withdrawal limits
• Enabling/disabling spending at ATMs, in stores, and/or online

GoHenry also automatically blocks spending at “over 18” merchants, such as casinos, alcohol wholesalers, adult-themed sellers, and more. Optionally, you can turn on a “strict merchant block” from any businesses that sell age-restricted items, even if they also sell kid-friendly merchandise. (For instance, your child wouldn’t be able to buy candy at a convenience store that sells alcohol.)

You can also block and unblock the card as needed from your parent account. So, let’s say your child has lost their card—you can block any expenditures on it until it’s found, then unblock it once it’s back in your child’s care.

Allowance + Chores

Parents can reduce their mental load and put allowance on repeat every week. Just choose the amount, and the day of the week, and it’ll automatically be sent to your kids from then on.

You can also set chores for your child, such as walking the dog, doing homework, or sweeping. Kids get paid as chores are marked completed either by you or your child. Any chores marked as complete will be paid out when weekly allowance is due.

Instant Money Transfers

In addition to paying a regular allowance, parents can click “Quick Transfer” to instantly send money to a child at any time. Instant money transfers are a great way to reward a child, gift money for a special occasion, or send money in the event of an emergency.

Savings Goals

Kids can set up savings goals through GoHenry to start building the essential habit of setting money aside. They can set a target amount and/or date and, if they find it motivating, add an image. GoHenry also offers weekly autosaving to help children reach their goals faster.

Parent-Paid Interest

Earning interest is an excellent way to motivate kids to save. While GoHenry itself doesn’t pay interest, it does offer parent-paid interest. When this feature is enabled, parents can pay a predetermined rate on any deposits in the child’s savings account. The interest is paid on the first of each month from the parent’s account.

Money Missions

In addition to the hands-on financial experience kids gain through GoHenry’s debit card, they can increase their financial literacy through GoHenry’s in-app Money Missions.

The short stories, videos, and quizzes are easy to binge, and learning is gamified through earning badges. These lessons are tailored for your child’s age, so younger kids learn money basics and older kids learn more advanced topics. Money Missions are developed by teachers and financial education experts and follow the K-12 Personal Finance Education National Standards.

My suggestion? Give your kids small monetary rewards for successfully completing lessons.

Giftlinks

You’re not the only one who can send money securely to your child through GoHenry. Anyone you give a Giftlink to can send money as well. So if grandparents want to send money for a birthday or a family friend wants to gift money for a baptism, they can easily do so without anyone needing to deal with cash. They can even add a personal message.

The sender doesn’t even need to have the GoHenry app. All they need is a credit card or debit card registered to a valid U.S. address (Cash, checks, nor prepaid debit cards won’t work, however.)

Customer Service

GoHenry has some of the best customer service among kids’ debit card providers. They offer everyday phone availability (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET), email access, and social media engagement.

Interested in GoHenry? You can sign up here.

Related: 9 Best Savings Accounts for Kids [Children’s Bank Accounts]

Revolut vs. GoHenry: Our Editors’ Choice Is …

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Overall, Revolut <18 and GoHenry are more similar than they are different. Both accounts offer custom cards, ample parental controls, and make paying your kid simple.

If you already have a Revolut account or an Acorns Premium account (which gives access to GoHenry), it likely makes sense to stick with the type of account you already have.

But what if both of these accounts are completely new to you? Rest assured, each of these accounts has its merits.

From a purely financial standpoint, you may want to choose Revolut as GoHenry has a monthly fee and Revolut <18 doesn’t. However, if the cost isn’t an issue, GoHenry has more robust parental controls and more educational materials to teach your kids about finances. I’d argue it offers enough to justify the price.

Other Debit Cards for Kids to Consider

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If you’re still not convinced on Revolut <18 or GoHenry, you might want to look at these other highly rated options:

App	Apple App Store Rating + Best For	Fees	Promotions
Greenlight	☆ 4.8 / 5 Customer rating and parental controls	Core: $4.99/mo. Max: $9.98/mo. Infinity: $14.98/mo. (Each plan supports up to 5 children.)	None
Copper Banking	☆ 4.9 / 5 Teen financial independence	Copper $4.95/mo., Copper + Invest: $7.95/mo.	30 days free
Axos First Checking	☆ 4.7 / 5 Teens ready to learn about money management	Free (no monthly fees)	None
*Apple App Store Rating as of April 1, 2024.

Related:

• Best Credit Cards for Teens [Build Credit]
• 4 Best Ways to Save Money for Kids [Children’s Savings Plans]
• Best Investments for Beginners to Start Investing

Disclosures

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Revolut <18

Revolut is not a bank. Banking services provided by Community Federal Savings Bank, Member FDIC. ¹Savings services provided by Cross River Bank, Member FDIC.