Who wants cheques and cash anymore? I've got a cheque book but very few places seem to accept cheques and walking around my neighbourhood with more than a tenner in my wallet is asking for trouble! I always use my credit card or sometimes debit card to buy things, and I'm guessing most people do the same. But what about our kids?

Quite simply, yes we have; our society's youth, specifically the under 18's demographic. A teenager cannot acquire a credit card (and correctly so), and those under 16 cannot not acquire a debit card either. Why is this? I suspect mainly because of bureaucracy on behalf of our financial institutions. This is a form of financial exclusion that belongs in the past, not in the inclusive and accepting society we live in today.

This issue is very close to my own heart. I have a fourteen year old son and he has been excluded from the electronic payments revolution. Mike spends a portion of his spare time exploring mankind's finest accomplishment, the internet. Albeit he has very strict guides in this exploration, his parents. On his journey through this parallel dimension, he often finds art he wishes to purchase; music and other applications. Unfortunately our banking system has failed to provide him with the tools necessary to explore the internet fully; he does not own an electronic payment card. The inefficient workaround to this exclusion is for him to use his parents' credit cards. Why inefficient? This solution gives Mike access to large lines of credit but he has not yet had the life experience to manage this responsibility appropriately.

I recently came across a useful tool for my son and me. I was surfing online and found a prepaid credit card. It's like a normal credit and debit card but you have to actually add the cash onto it before you can spend, hence the term prepaid card! It was really easy to get, I bought a prepaid MasterCard (although I think you can get VISA ones also) and it took only a couple of minutes. The really useful bit here is that the company I bought it from offered an additional card for my son, with his name on it. His card is linked to my prepaid card so I can transfer cash onto his card online instantly.

I am very much an early adopter of technology, and so I recently acquired a prepaid card and accompanying card for Mike. I tend to be a natural sceptic but considering this technology is still first generation, I have been suitably impressed. Since receiving the plastic and associated online account facility, I have loaded funds onto my card and subsequently transferred small amounts to Miike's prepaid card, which he has used several times now quite autonomously. The prepaid card works exactly how it was promised but there has been an ancillary benefit which I did not factor in. With financial liberalisation comes financial education. Mike is beginning to perceive money in a manner I would not expect of him for a few years yet. As he is now responsible for making his own spending decisions and he can view her transaction history, and he knows what his allowance is and when it will arrive, he appears to be learning about money management. he is taking ownership of the funds he has access to and subsequently how he spends these funds. Eureka.

So this prepaid MasterCard is working brilliantly for us and I know it would work well for my mates who have older kids too. I've been shopping around the net and there are loads of companies out there selling these prepaid cards, but not all of them seem to offer the kids cards.

This author is a consumer products researcher, specializing in bank cards and personal finance. He suggests downloading a free thirty six page guide called the 'Essential Guide To Your Money'. For more information, visit the prepaid card website.