True, and that’s why I will still have to be regularly reviewing the transactions, and confronting my sister if there are any more spurious ones. (I suspect I can block Ebay and similar sites with one of the aforementioned cards, to at least close off that end of things.)
My teenage son has a Greenlight card. I think it works great. I have it set up to automatically pay his weekly allowance. It has all kinds of customizations available. You can block particular vendors, or entire categories.
Hopefully the options mentioned so far will work.
If not, I just wanted to mention a few other alternatives — neither is a perfect replacement, though:
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I’ve had many good experiences with an online-only (plus phone-based tap-to-pay) limited-use card service, Privacy.com.
The great part is that they allow you to create multiple, distinct, virtual Mastercard numbers that can be locked to either:
- A specific merchant (like Amazon or Walmart)
- A specific category (like “groceries” or “retail”)
- And/or combined with monthly or per-transaction spend limits
You can open as many of these as you need, and monitor them, tweak them, and close them individually, as needed.
If you created a couple of these numbers and locked them to Amazon.com and Walmart.com respectively, those particular cards could not be used anywhere else.
The downside is that it’s online-only. (Or you can set it up on her phone, but if the physical Walmart doesn’t support tap-to-pay, that won’t do her any good). If she’s willing to only order for pickup and delivery, never pay in person at the store, that might work… but you would still need a separate solution for cash withdrawals and such.
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If you can move most of the shopping online using one of those merchant-limited cards, you could also have a separate debit card just for cash withdrawals, under a new checking account linked to the main one. You could keep that card locked (online or in the app) most of the time and with a $0 balance, and only unlock it and put money in it when she needs to make a cash withdrawal. A Venmo card would work similarly (but if she doesn’t have a bank account at all, I think you would have to set up the Venmo account using one of yours/your mom’s).
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Another less-than-perfect option is to set up a Doordash/Instacart/Walmart account for her and only give her the logins (with the payment methods saved), not the actual card numbers. She could order for delivery & pickup but not use the card anywhere else.
I have used the Walmart card for several years and picked a few features that may help. One is that you cam load the card with up to $1000, but only allow them access to small amounts when they call and need it.
You cam also manually lock the card at anytime and then either unlock it at a predetermined time for a given amount. Or just wait until the ask you to unlock and then transfer money from the vault to the portion they have access to.
By putting $1000 in the vault that you control you don’t have to wait on bank transfers to the card.
Good to know, as that’s the card we have now, but I don’t want to have to be micromanaging it to that extent if I can help it.
If 'twere me, I’d look at the issuers of the cards:
True Link: Sunrise Banks N.A.
Greenlight: Community Federal Savings Bank
And perhaps talk directly to them about the problem you’re trying to solve.
That is, in fact, my plan for Tuesday, after the holiday weekend.
Cool. Will be interesting to hear what you learn!
You could just set a predetermined time each week to make an ATN withdrawal. You could put like $200 into their active account and unlock on their lunch break on Tuesday and the lock the card again for another week.
First I think you need to systematically go through expenditures for the last year or whatever and see exactly what expenditures are made and at what stores.
Second you need to classify these expenditures and see how best to handle them. For example
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Bills.Such as utilties, taxes, health care bills. You handle these directly, online billpay, bank autopay, mailing a check, whatever. I think you should do this to make sure there are no interruptions in service. Note many of these could be handled by privacy.com virtual cards as mentioned below.
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Online purchases and payments. Privacy.com virtual cards, where you have a virtual card for each store or category or one-off payment, and you can set an amount limit.
https://www.privacy.com/ -
The general inperson purchase of goods and services.. True Link Financial Visa Card.
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Small cash purchases. A reloadable debit card which allows atm withdrawals (like a Walmart Money Card) or separate bank account where you keep the balance at a low level and refill it sparingly for small ATM cash withdrawals.While diversion is possible keeping it at a low amount of money limits the amount diverted. You can also simply send them small amounts of cash in the mail or leave it with them when you visit.
For what it’s worth, I am taking over handling getting the bills paid: utilities, property taxes, copays and deductibles for my mom’s healthcare, etc. The reloadable debit card is purely for my sister to be able to make the day-to-day household purchases.