The truth about children and pre-paid credit cards

September 6, 2007

If your child has a pre-paid credit card, or if you have a prepaid credit card that your child could have access to, then you might want to read this. According to The Observer, children today are using pre-paid credit cards to fund alcohol, porn and to gamble online.

When you purchase anything online it simply asks you for your date of birth and your credit card number. Very rarely do you have any other checks regarding your age. So this leaves a big opportunity for children under the age of 18, to purchase things that they really shouldn’t.

Porn in particular is a real problem, with many underage children purchasing it online. However, it isn’t just children who could benefit from these pre-paid credit cards when it comes to pornography. It is also thought that Paedophiles could potentially purchase illegal porn on the cards as they are practically untraceable. So they can download whatever they want, whenever they want and they can get away with it.

So just how do these children get these pre-paid credit cards? Well it seems that they can get them fairly easily at corner shops. They are very rarely asked their age and so they can go into the shop, purchase a card and use it as they please. Whilst this is going against the card issuer guidelines, it still happens just as alcohol is often sold to underage drinkers.

As for the companies who actually allowed these pre-paid credit cards to be used, Virgin Wines, Play, Amazon and Foxy Bingo were among just some of the top ones. So if you have the internet at home and you have a child under the age of 18; it may be a good idea to see what they have been up to whilst they are online.