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Everything You Need to Know About ZAAP: A Digital Payment Card & Wearable Band For Kids – Review

Help your kids get digital with their pocket money!  ZAAP helps Australian children and teenagers to save money, makes them feel financially responsible and reinforces positive financial behaviours.

What is ZAAP?

ZAAP is a prepaid Mastercard and digital financial tool designed for school-aged kids and their families.

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The cool thing about ZAAP is that you can choose a prepaid card, plus you have the option to choose from more than 50 card designs or to custom-design your own card. Or go the whole hog and choose the prepaid card and a small chip that you insert into a cool wearable wristband, or a mini silicon ‘keeper’ that fits onto your existing watch or bracelet.

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Payments can be made using the ZAAP card or wristband anywhere where tap/contactless prepaid Mastercard payments are accepted – including overseas. This is great for a travelling family like ours!

The ZAAP card and wristband are both linked to an app that both the parent and child can access, to add funds, transfer funds from parent to child, check transactions and set savings goals.

Setting up ZAAP

The set up process for ZAAP is straightforward and takes about 5 minutes. I open an account on the ZAAP website and order a prepaid card and wearable band ($29.50 for each fully ZAAPed bundle) for two children which costs a total $76.44 including $8.95 postage, $1.54 credit card fee and $6.95 GST.

You can choose from 50 fun card designs or there is the option of creating your own design for an extra charge, which is as simple as uploading an image such as a selfie or other photo.

Bookworm Lady AB chooses the card with the books on it, while Baby 2.0 chooses the standard ZAAP design. And while I’m not one for reinforcing gender stereotypes, for the sake of keeping each account separate Lady AB gets a pink wristband and Baby 2.0 gets the blue wristband. The black one is just too boring for my kids!

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The next step is to download the ZAAP app. In the app there’s a ‘parent wallet’ and a ‘child wallet’. You first need to add money to the parent wallet (maximum $999) which you do by transferring funds from your linked account. This takes less than 45 minutes to process, but is still less time than if you do a bank transfer which would take 2-3 days. Each reload to the Parent Wallet has a fee of 1.5% of the total amount eg $100 transfer into the parent wallet costs $1.50 in fees.

You then activate the child’s wallet in the app and instantly transfer money from the parent wallet to the child wallet. The transfer can be done as a one-off transaction or at regular intervals as an allowance.

The instant parent-to-child transfer is particularly handy for older children who are going out independently without adults. If they’re stranded on public transport or need to purchase phone credit urgently then parents can instantly transfer money from the parent wallet to the child wallet at any time.

Note that children are able to access the app as well, using a PIN to log in. The child can access only the child wallet to see their own transactions and cannot see the parent wallet, so kids aren’t able to access funds that are not already in the child wallet.

ZAAP Card vs Wearable Band

I wasn’t sure whether I needed the ZAAP wristband at all.

But the wearable band provides kids with an additional way to access their funds and is particularly handy if they’ve forgotten or misplaced their card. You can temporarily lock the lost item in the app and the other payment method will still work.

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It’s a unique feature that competitor products don’t offer. And the kids love the novelty of tapping their wrist to make payments!

Why use ZAAP?

Well, for one, we have found that it’s much more secure than handing your credit card over to your child! They can only spend what’s on the card.

Secondly, I believe financial literacy is a skill that should be taught to children from a young age.

Lady AB (8yo) and Baby 2.0 (6yo) are at the age where they are earning pocket money and old enough to be (generally) trusted to make smart choices about how to spend the money they save.

ZAAP empowers children to spend only what they have, and to make savings goals for what they want. Just like adult life!

Because my kids are young they still covet shiny coins. So they receive their pocket money in gold coins and keep that in a traditional piggy bank.

ZAAP is a fun way to engage kids about how to manage their money in an increasingly cashless economy.  So when we go out I take the balance of what’s physically in their piggy bank and transfer that amount onto each ZAAP child wallet.

Using ZAAP to spend

We road test the ZAAP cards and wristbands on a trip to Melbourne’s first certified LEGO Store. I transfer $100 from my account to the parent wallet (which takes up to 45 minutes to process) and then add $50 in to each child’s wallet (which is immediate).

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Both kids know that $50 is the maximum that they can spend with their ZAAP cards and wristbands. This prior knowledge is empowering and saves later arguments! While they really really really want the $500 LEGO Disneyland Castle, they know that their ZAAP cards/wristbands have only a maximum of $50 – and mum and dad aren’t going to open their wallets to pay for anything that costs more.

Using ZAAP to save

The other advantage of ZAAP is that the child can set savings goals and track their savings progress via the app. We are visiting London for Christmas this year and when Lady AB spots the awesome LEGO London Bus she is immediately enamoured of it. But it costs $200!

So Lady AB and I discuss how she might be able to save to purchase the set by Christmas. We work out how much pocket money she’d have to earn and how frequently she’d need to save in order to reach her $200 goal.

We have also discussed with the kids that from now until we depart for London, all pocket money they earn must be saved. Then when we arrive in London they will be free to use their ZAAP cards and wristbands to buy souvenirs, snacks, toys and books with their own savings. It’s always good to have a goal!

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A big thumbs up for ZAAP

As a family we have loved using ZAAP for easy saving and spending for the kids, but it’s also opened up lots of conversations about money management and good financial practice.

Start teaching your kids good money habits today. Priceless!

*There is a monthly $2 service fee per account and ZAAP has a 3-year validity.

**Note that international transactions incur a 3% foreign exchange, compared to 3-8% on credit cards.

This post has been published in collaboration with ZAAP


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I hope this post has helped or inspired you! Subscribe to my weekly newsletter to find out more ways for your family to have fun together!

About Joyce Watts

Joyce Watts is a former intellectual property, IT and media lawyer turned serial entrepreneur.

As well as being the founder of TOT: HOT OR NOT she helps businesses with their SEO, email marketing & social media as BrightSmart.com.au; she owns an online bike store CycleStyle.com.au and develops and produces creative experiences for families via WheelieGoodFun.com. She used to publish another popular lifestyle and food blog called MEL: HOT OR NOT The decisive guide to Melbourne.

She lives in inner-city Melbourne with her husband, two children and seven bikes.

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