All four of mine got a bank account and debit card at 11.
They don’t get “pocket money”, but they’re expected to put Xmas and birthday money into it and can work for more, now and then (wash a car, pressure wash the decking, clean a bathroom, mow the lawn, even work a shift at the wall (assisting/ making coffee/teaching kids club) from age 14 up.
Now the older two are out with their mates a lot, we’ll often transfer a tenner so they can buy food or similar (thats pretty instant). All our accounts are with the same bank and we have access and control over them too, but they have their own cards, account, app on their phone etc.
This also means they will be sent to the shops for groceries or to buy their own clothes etc. using their own card and we’ll send them the money to do it or repay what they’ve used of their own if it’s a “family expense”. So, if they want an expensive, designer, pair of trainers, we’ll give them the price of a generic pair and they’ll have to find the difference. On the other hand, if they need new boots for footy or climbing, we’ll sort it out.
And so on.
They also manage their own data/phone usage, though we have a family contract and Polly dishes out the data/text/call allowance between them and breaching the “ration” requires a very good explanation...
Oh, yeah, they had to make the account applications themselves, we would “help” but they had to do it.
