Greenlight Kids & Teen Banking
reviews and complaints

The first problem arose because I accidentally incorrectly entered how much money I wanted added to each child’s account. I entered them backwards and put one daughters money into her sisters account and vice versa. Apparently, there is no way to transfer money from one child’s account to the other. The only way to do that would be to contact customer service… I figured to avoid that hassle. I would just withdraw the excess from one girls account so that I could then deposit it into the other. The cards arrived, and I tried to withdraw from an ATM, and was declined. I tried again and was declined again. After googling to find out why that wasn’t working, I found the greenlight has a policy that the first account transaction needs to be a purchase, not an ATM withdrawal. It would be really nice if they had told me that from the beginning. A few days after that, I get an email from greenlight saying that they locked my daughters account. Now I have to call customer service and wait on hold so that they will unlock the account. After verifying my identity through their electronic phone system, and then wait on hold to be transferred to a customer service rep. The customer service rep, then makes me go through and re-verify my identity over again, Even though I just did that. OK, I get it security whatever. Next, she tells me that to unlock the account I’m going to have to take a picture of the card and email it to them. Now this is where I am at my wits end. I’ve already had like five different problems with this company and we’ve never even made a purchase yet. I am closing the accounts and going to go with a different provider. All that I’ve seen come out of greenlight is headaches and a hassle. I can’t imagine that it would get any better if we actually started using these cards. I’m not signing up to pay for that. The whole reason I chose to pay a monthly fee was going to be for convenience. What convenience is not what they provided.

Updated Review: The week following the issue described below, I received a phone call from Greenlight. They apologized and directly addressed the issue, and stated that they hope to put a process in place to make to address issues like this more quickly.

While I standby my concerns regarding safety (you can’t count on this card to work like a major bank debit or credit card until they address how quickly they review a flagged account), there customer service is solid and I sincerely appreciated their response.

***

I recently downloaded Greenlight and have been using it for our 3 children for about a month. I’ve been relatively pleased with the service until this weekend when Greenlight turned off all three kids’ cards on a Saturday afternoon because my wife added her bank account as a funding source for the Parent’s Wallet. This caused a huge problem, temporarily stranding my daughter while an “underwriter” reviewed my account. I attempted to explain the somewhat urgent need for a rapid review (my daughter was about to miss her train), but was told there was another account ahead of me, pending review.

Let’s forget the fact that GL disabled my ability to turn my daughter’s card on from the app (which I and my wife have exclusive access) and that despite explaining the somewhat urgent need to review no additional efforts were made...and let’s address the decision to turn off the other two children’s card, inconveniencing the entire family.

Bottom line — this is not a service that you can count on as reliable. It’s a fine digital alternative to an allowance, but you can’t count on it to work when you need it to.

A huge disappointment.

My best friend has been using Greenlight for a few years now and recommend I try it. I signed up and added cards for my for kids. After a few weeks I still hadn’t received the cards but I was getting notifications as if I had. Had to email Greenlight and eventually they resent the cards and I received them in about a week. My kids loved it! Then my daughter was at a basketball game and needed money. I couldn’t get the app to open on my phone. It kept saying “sorry we’re experiencing network issues”, or something like that. I tried multiple times to add money to my daughters card so she could eat between her games and wasn’t able to. I contacted Greenlight and they said the usual troubleshooting suggestions and eventually said to uninstall the app and re-install it. It still didn’t work. So my daughter had to borrow money from a friend to eat. Later I tried to open the app again and it worked. Too late, of course. Well this issue happens 9 out of ten times that I try to do anything on the app. I have had to reach out to Greenlight multiple times and they are always friendly and they did credit me for that month but I just tried to access my account again and it’s saying “No internet connection”. Which isn’t true. So, once again I am not able to add money to my wallet or move funds or even open the app. I can’t keep paying for something I can’t use consistently and in moments when it’s very necessary to get money to my kids when I can’t physically be there with them. If the issue doesn’t get resolved I will have to close my account. I really hope it gets fixed because it’s a great concept that makes the busy parenting life a little easier...when it works.

I’ve used this app for my daughter to track chores and create an ongoing savings account, giving her the ability to buy things on her own. I loved it when I found it, and my daughter continues to love it. Then something changed, where it will no longer automatically move money from my Chase account to my wallet in the app. So they cannot take their fee (which is high compared to other cards like this), nor can I transfer money to her card for allowance or chores. I’ve contacted their customer service multiple times and I’m told that Plaid” the company chase uses to transfer money doesn’t work with their app. Every time I transfer or attempt to, in the final step it says there’s no Internet connectivity to complete the transfer even though I’m on my home Wi-Fi and streaming movies and everything else you could possibly imagine from this device. When I confronted them how they can’t be compatible to one of the largest banks in the United States their comment multiple times back to me without answering any of my direct questions is simply please enter your debit card information we can no longer take anything from savings or checking accounts from Chase. They then blame plaid.Chase tells me they do millions of transactions with plaid with thousands of different apps banks etc. smh… lousy response and customer service from what used to be a good app. No I’m just trying to figure out how to get my daughters money off the card and into something she can actually use and continue to save money with. I’ve asked their customer service multiple times the easiest way to do this and they won’t even respond to my questions? Makes me feel very scammed knowing she has $700.00 sitting there.

(Just so you know, this is coming from the kid)
I have found Greenlight through an advertisement on YouTube a month ago. I shared it to my mother through messages, and she downloaded it right away. Right at the start, we noticed how the kids get a real card, and has pretty much everything like a real card. The digits, safety digits, and an expiration date. It’s so realistic and teaches kids about finance!
There is one problem, though. The app has a “chores” feature, where your kids can earn money through chores. Children can checkmark what chores they have done; and that’s the problem! The kids can just hit all the chores and not do anything. And a simple way to do this is to let the parents checkmark the chores (let me just add I didn’t look into this much.)
Also, the child can have money in a saving pocket which they can’t spend, and have some in one of these four pockets:

“Spend anywhere”
“Any ATM”
“Any Gas Station”
And “Any Restaurant”.

You also have an “Allowance” feature that allows kids to get some money at a rate of the parent’s choosing. This can be changed by the parents at anytime.
Oh, and I forgot to mention there are two types of chores you can put for you’re child. These are called “Weekly Chores” and “One-time Chores”. Weekly chores are things like take care of the pet, homework, and wash the dishes. They can also be any day you want, and it will repeat every week. One-time Chores are chores that will not get repeated every week. Like mow the lawn, take the dog to the vet, and prepare lunch.

After maybe a few weeks or a month, you’re child will most likely be financially smart. But you don’t have to take my word for it, download it yourself and seek you’re child a smart life.

My daughter recently used the card in Glossier LA. Shes out with her friends for her friend’s bday celeb. To my daughter’s dismay, the card was declined! Not once but TWICE! My daughter was embarrassed by this and called me right away. Told me about the embarrassing situatuon THIS card has put her in. I immediately called greenlight. An agent named Min answered .Min the agent said that the card is expired. i told Min that I just opened the acct not too long ago how can it be expired? I 3-way call my daughter so she can tell Min of the expiry date of the card ( the expiration is not till JULY 2023) . Since i am not satisfied with the reasons of MIN. i asked to be transferred to a supervisor. HAILEY the supervisor answered the call. On HAILEY ‘s end she said that my daughter put in an incorrect passcode number. My daughter on the other line said they run at as credit (not the first time it happened and it worked just fine in seat in restaurants BEFORE) now the supervisor HAILEY said coz it is a “prepaid” card that it ahould not be run as credit. I said it was done numerous times before and it worked. Hailey said that she sees in her computer wrong pin was entered. My daughter said to Hailey the store did not ask for a pin. I asked Hailey what is she seeing in her monitor?
Is my money safe with greenlight? Now I am not sure! The supervisor definitely cannot give me the answers im looking for! Theres money in the acct so how can it be declined. Greenlight should think and know that there is a psychological effect when kids get embarrassed! They should be held liable with the product they are selling coz as a customer. I have Funds in my kids’ acct but I trusted them that the money of my kids will be safe but they brought my daughter embarrassment and do not do angthing about this! Shame on you

Greenlight app: F Almost 2 hours of attempting to connect my bank to their app later, it’s impossible. Started with my iPhone rubbing iOS 14.5 and connecting to CHASE bank: infinity loop at plaid connect. Customer support ran me through Install - reinstall, reboot - so I went ahead if their script, Upgraded to iOS 14.5.1 - they called back, I explained I needed time to go up 1 iOS, was told to call them back…. Well, ok. So upgrade completes and now, app says CHASE is unavailable. I called: nope! now closed. (Gee thanks for not warning me, prior support). But: this is a financial institution, so I texted. NOPE - “ Thanks for reaching out to Greenlight! Our hours are 8a-11p EST M-F and 8a-9p on the weekends. We will reach out as soon as we are back in the office!” So: here’s where I am after 1.75 hours later (1). this company cannot support a new user on an iPhone running 14.5 with a chase bank account. (2) their app can’t support an iPhone running 14.5.1 connecting to CHASE And worst part: (3) they’re not available? this is a financial institution that can’t afford a call center? So, icing on the cake of an UNRELIABLE bank connection: limited support availability. Amd if this is how NEW CUSTOMERS trying to send $ experience the app, I can imagine life as an actual user paying fees. Unacceptable. - using on the cake of unreliable bank connection, I’m done here. Moving on to PayPal (free; 24/7 support) and a chore app (free). If wait until this little company gets it’s act together, because they are not ready for prime time today.

UPDATE May 11: you can’t locate my account because your app has a bug by which accounts cannot be created. After 2 hours and learning of your inability to provide market customer service, I did request my account be deleted.

My review is true and factual - would you like screenshots to verify?

I went to this companies website and read about the service and how much it would cost. It's website gave NO information and said "to learn more download the app". Kind of backwards but I went and downloaded the app. What I wanted to know was if it cost and if so how much. I couldn't find any info on that. The app forces you to go all the way through creating an account, verifying identity, adding your credit card, and putting money into the account BEFORE informing you that it cost after 30 days. I was pretty aggravated because considering the company forces you to go that far, it seemed there wouldn't be any charge for it. The user should be notified WELL before verifying identity, entering credit card, and funding the account. Yes-the service and convenience of this account are great but they have to let people know about the costs earlier. The first 30 days are a free trial but customers should be told that up front. I cancelled by the end of the first week. After another week had passed since canceling I noticed it was still working. I called in and told them. They said it was cancelled. After the 30 days, I was charged the monthly service fee. I called and their completely inept overseas customer service said that it was cancelled and that I was not charged. I actually had to threaten a lawsuit to get put through to someone else. This person was in the US and admitted that I indeed was charged. She got it credited back to me and helped cancel the account. Unfortunately, the account still has to exist for some reason with my credit card still there but not active! By the way, my personal bank was able to add a checking account under my main acct and get the card printed in my daughters name. It also has the options that I set up for automatic text messages any time the card is used JUST LIKE this Greenlight card. Cost at my bank $0.

I love this debit card, everything is super easy to use. I have 2 children currently enrolled and have been using this service for over a year. I don’t mind the $4.99 fee because it’s for 2 children and because some free debit cards may even have more issues. My only problem involves my children spending money that they think they have buy do not really have in their accounts because it has been overdrawn. For example: one debit card says available balance $7.00, so my child buys something for $3.00 and it was declined because of “insufficient funds”. Then I get a real time message saying something like “ Greenlight purchase of $13.00 was declined”, but she was only trying to buy something for only $3.00, which her available balance was $7.00. I called customer service and they said that there was a purchase that hadn’t cleared yet; making her real available balance -$10.00. This is very confusing to her and frustrating for me. She mostly buys things online and after school for snacks. This makes her feel embarrassed when her purchase is declined in front of her friends. Sometimes she tells me to give her cash instead, which is impossible when I’m at work and defeats the purpose of having this service. This always happens when her funds are low because she keeps buying things because she thinks she has money to do so. This happens to many times a month. I just do my own configuration, that when she buys something and gets declined, I then look to see how much she was trying to spend and what does her message say to figure out that her debit card is $-10.00. Please, please fix this problem, decline the purchase if there’s not enough money in her debit card to cover the purchase. There should not be any negative balance or if there is a negative balance it should reflect in the parent and child app; instead of saying that her available balance is $7.00.

Be very careful about getting a Greenlight Card for your child! It would be better to go through your bank or a reputable credit card service. My wife and I obtained Greenlight cards for our 2 teenagers, because we felt it would be a good way to teach them responsibility and give them some independence. Things were going well until we saw two unauthorized Godaddy transactions( $20.17 and $127.79 )in June. My wife called Greenlight when the transactions were pending in hopes that they would decline the payment however she was informed that it would have to proceed and then dispute it, which should not be a problem. When she called back to dispute the transaction, she was informed that she would have to fill out paperwork which we would receive in the mail. When received, she filled out the information and mailed in the paperwork for the above transactions. This past week we noticed that the it said “refunded” for both amounts in her account but there was no actual money. We then saw “spent” for both transactions which we did not understand since there was never any actual money replaced in the account. After calling Greenlight, she was informed that the dispute department said that the original transactions were ”not in error” so the refunds were removed. By the way, the money was never placed back in the account. She was then informed that she could dispute it again.
Greenlight has taken her hard earned money ,and we had no idea until my wife decided to call them. The sad part is that she spoke to Greenlight when the transactions were pending and they did nothing to deny payment to Godaddy because they were unauthorized, and she spoke to them several times about the transactions. Their solution is to take this teenager’s babysitting money. Do NOT get this card; go through a reputable bank or credit card service. We just don’t want to have this happen to any other family

I’ve put over $60 into this app yet my kids barely have $20 between them. They hit you with all these bogus fees after they say it’s free for the first month, and I’m still waiting on a deposit to be refunded to my bank account because Greenlight took the funds but claimed it was declined due to insufficient funds. When you call customer service, they’re literally scripted to give people the run around. They put you on hold and then claim they’re getting approval from a higher authority, leave you on hold for 5 minutes and then come back and say the same exact thing they said before you asked for a supervisor. They’re telling me the funds were taken from the bank, BUT my bank declined the transaction. Call the bank and they said the obvious, that if they’d declined it, GREENLIGHT couldn’t have taken the money out, we’d literally have to give it to them. They want me to believe my bank GAVE them the money and then declined the transaction. NEVER in the history of banking has that ever happened to me. If the bank declined a charge, it does NOT come out of your account. I have retained counsel and now they’re about to get sued behind 20 little funky dollars because they’re so shady that they can remove money from your bank and come back and tell you that the transaction declined because the money wasn’t there, yet it clearly states on bank records that GREENLIGHT took the funds. 100% SCAM DO NOT LINK YOUR BANK ACCOUNTS. the account history is a jumble of transactions, not separated ( I have 2 children) by card, account or anything. So when you go to look at your transaction history, you have to write it out to see what money went to who’s card and such. They’ve made it so confusing to sort that when you call with a relevant issue, their CSR’s can waste your time by reading transactions out line by line to try and confuse you. The CSR’s are definitely ESL, and don’t understand basic questions and concerns. When you ask for escalation, they will put you on hold while they’re “getting approval from a higher authority” 100000% DO NOT RECOMMEND

I have account since summer. My daughter went to Texas to visit her dad from California. First time they are using the card. No one informed us about the instructions. The card had been off. I called customer service this morning 04/15, 0900AM. The lady helped us. The lady said buy small item for activation, and able to use ATM. She did not tell me to add money in section “gas balance” on my application, I have it zero balance. The card got declined. I add money and They went to gas station to retry to buy small item. The lady gave instructions and then in the end of her call, she said your card is on, and you should be able to get atm. The card for “off” again(second attempt to call customer service). I called, the man was not helping me. I asked try to explained the person did not do the instruction properly, he refused to helped me. I tried to request new card, he refused. He lied to transfer me to top management. This is the first time that the dad try to use the card to get money for my daughter. The man on customer service, he started bickering with me and tells me to he will hang up rather find other solutions. I felt unfairly, I am charged monthly without using the card. Finally to use the card, we cannot get any help from customer service man go have solution but dead end rules. I suppose to call the next morning to speak to top management, I felt the man placed me on hold and tells me that management decide to cancel my account. I work graveyard. Luckily, the management called me. I explained to her that the dad made error and I did not see there is no money on “gas section”. I told the dad to buy small item on gas station. The card closed. I called customer service for second time to turn on the card. The man did not hear my side view. He told me to add money. Which I did. I needed the card to turn on again, he refused. Thankfully Ashly called me and helped me fix my card to try again to ACTIVATE the Greenlight card. So relief, to use the card out of state. I have the card to have record of money I give to my card. To proof to court that I took care my kid 6years without child support. Even my kid stays with dad, this card is my evidence that I supper my kid with me or without me

Seeing that I am on the child end of Greenlight, and I don’t know what issues my mom might have with the app, being a 12 year old learning about saving, investing, and stock exchange in school, Greenlight is perfect. I do have a suggestion though. I really like the Level Up thing where it teaches you about spending and investing, and it’s great…except i’ve finished all the lessons on both topics with all three stars. So i’d be great if you made more lessons or more topics so we can learn more, and get more exp because for some reason, I’m still on level 5 and I can’t go up because I can’t get any more exp. Also can you add more stuff to the reward shop because I’ve gotten all of the backdrops and now I’m stuck on level 5 with x amount of coins and I can’t do anything. ALSO Greenlight has a giving option and my mom was like, ‘Oh that’s great! Now you can give for offering during church!’ and I was like, ‘Cool’ so we went to go and try to add my churches giving app I believe and for some reason we couldn’t find it or it didn’t work so we ending up having to put it in my savings because it was supposed to be 70% spend; 20% save; 10% offering/give; but we had to make it 30% save and 0% offering/give. If you could make it easier for giving options, it’d really help us out. But overall the app is really good. Have a great day/night. -Madi(greenlight)

Edit: Ok so I’ve been using the app since the update and it’s umm great there are new levels and I was able to move up to level 7. I know, I know, it’s really petty of me to complain about an in-app game, but I can’t help it. Besides, one of the new levels, interest rates i think, umm…it’s unfinished. I currently have 0/0 coins for that lesson and then if you click on the start lesson button it’s just a blank screen with music in the background. If you could fix/finish that, it’d be great

-FallenStar

Edit Edit: Ok so, thank you for finishing the interest rates level. But here’s the thing, what time zone is Greenlight in bc even tho it says we get our allowance at 12 am on Sunday, it get it at around 7 or 8 am, and something could get unchecked during those hours and that means we don’t get allowance (since my mom has it set for all or nothing). So if you could fix that, that’d be great!

-FallenHalo365

Overall The app seems to be work well so far and I'm willing to stick out the bugs and limits to help teach my kids financial responsibility. However, is buggy at times, especially around passwords and logging in. I set up accounts for two kids, write their passwords down for them. Initially on both it did not recognize their passwords and we had to reset. I am positive we set up and write down the passwords correctly. My son also keeps getting logged out on his iPad and experiences the same issue with his password when trying to log back in and i have to reset it

I am prefacing the next part by saying I'm a CPA so i figure if I'm having issues, non-math nerds may have them as well. My Other main negative so far revolves around using the app for multiple kids. It has a daily parental deposit limit if $500, but doesn't specify when that limit resets each day. Is it 24 hours from the time you hit 500, 24 hours from your last deposit, or at midnight? During initial setup. My kids wanted to include all of their birthday and Christmas money, one had squirreled it away for 10 years so it was a large amount. I made my first child's deposit yesterday (was less than 500 total) and I keep checking back today to make the second large initial deposit of the other one's saved money and to get them both set up but still get the red $500 limit message. The message doesn't say when you can make the next deposit or how much you have 'used' of your $500 limit, just that you've hit it. There is a way to add it up in your transfer history (I did) but my total deposits for the past 24 hours (or yesterday only if you look at it that way) is less than 500. so technically I shouldn't even be getting that error or at least a notice saying you can contribute $xx more today. My suggestion to the app development team would be to remove the cap for the first day of setup or make it $500/child so parents aren't chasing the $500 target for days and giving up on the app during onboarding. Same issue will come into play as you plan for allowance. If you have multiple kids and pay them weekly for chores, you will have to make multiple deposits if your total monthly deposit exceeds $500. Not the end of the world, just annoying and makes the app less user-friendly from the onset.

UPDATED***
I called the number they responded with and spoke with them for the 7th time in 2 months. I even offered to close my other bank account an provide verification that it has been closed to prove there is no active dispute against Greenlight and they STILL refused to release my funds. $800 they stole from me with zero intention of returning. I offered to put them on a 3-way call with capital 1…they said no. I’ve exhausted all options. I recorded the final conversations (I disclosed at the beginning of the call) and the rep stated clear as a bell No, we will not release your funds even if you close your account. I will be taking legal action and reporting this company to the ComplaintsBoard.com.

I deactivated my account which had a parents wallet and 4 children’s’/teens’ accounts. All but 1 of those accounts had money in them. In August I canceled my account due to them locking ALL accounts due to 1 transaction on 1 account they deemed as a fraudulent transaction (it wasn’t, it was a transaction at target which was a place that my kids frequent). Anyways, I got sick of this happening. It happened too often and I got sick of fixing it. Long story short - 2 months went by and no check. As soon as my account was deactivated, they revoked access to my account and I was locked out of the account so I could no longer view transaction history or balances. Shady to say the least. I called and got escalated and disconnected twice. TWICE. Nearly $800 dollars and the explanation I received was “when the account was deactivated, they forgot to move the funds from the children’s accounts”. This was my children’s back to school money, it was devastating to tell them they couldn’t get shoes and clothes. So long story short, they’ve been essentially holding over $700 hostage and now I have to wait even longer to get my money back, and that’s if they even process it like they say they will this time. I’d never recommend this app to ANYONE. Great in theory, but Capital One’s teen account is so much more reliable and allows for a greater deal of either freedom or control and the app is much easier to navigate for both parents AND child. Plus if you have a capital one account, it links to your personal banking app. This was and still is a nightmare. WHERE IS MY MONEY GREENLIGHT?!

Keep in mind we did just start using Greenlight a few days ago. BUT, I have already come across a few things that would make it much more user friendly and all inclusive. Pros: I love how the app looks and is easy to navigate. My kids (16, 12 and 12) found it very easy as well. I like that you can set it that some of their allowance goes into save and give. I like that the cards can be turned off through the app if they misplace it. The monthly fee will s reasonable and moving money is easy and seems safe. Cons: The allowance settings to move money to Savings and Give are in percentages. It would be cool if you could do it in dollar amounts or percentages. Setting up chores for each kid was a chore in itself for me. It is nice that they have it so you can add a custom chore, BUT, it is per child and doesn’t save in the list when you got to set up the next child. A lot of typing and figuring it out. I have chores that all do and some that individuals do, so a way to edit them as a family at once might be nice. Also, I have “work for hire” opportunities for the kids to earn a few extra bucks (like chore classifieds.) Greenlight doesn’t allow me to push out chores to all 3 kids to see and claim. If I could do that and set how often to reset it, it would help us organize without them always asking what jobs are available or how much $ they’d get and me always having to type it in each time as a One Time Chore for each specific kid. So, having a way to edit and push out chores to claim in a family chore section would be SO much more efficient. (Saves on arguments on who gets what if when claimed it gets grayed out until reset.) Also, a way to communicate when a kid says they finished a chore would be great. I have seen chore apps where the kid can add a proof picture to show the finished chore. So, the notification would pop up like “Bob finished Wipe the Bathroom sinks! See Bob’s proof pic!” Then when you click it goes to their history with the pic attached to see quickly or notes. I do think this app/service is on the right track but it could be a lot better with more whole family interaction. Rather than just money management and a list of to do’s that give the parent a lot of typing and micromanaging to do. I really hope Greenlight sees this review and takes these into consideration to add. We are in the first month free and I really don’t want to have to keep looking.

I convinced my friends to sign their kids up for this app, so that I could send the kids gifts and help them save for the things they want.

The setup was rather confusing for them, but they finally were able to get it set up. They added me as a guardian which means that I was able to log in and send money using the cards that had been added to the account (their cards). That’s not what I wanted, and I didn’t want to add my own card because then my friends would probably accidentally use it for the kids.

I was able to find within the app a link for friends and family to send money. This is what I wanted! However, the link is generic and makes the friend or family member fill out the kids info, and then you aren’t sure if you did it right and you don’t know where the money is going. So, first user experience failure... the link should be specific to the kid, and clicking it should bring up a list of items the kid is saving for and allow the family member to contribute directly. The kids on our account don’t have cell phone numbers yet. I wonder if they forgot to handle that situation?

So I gave up. About 2 months later I decide to give it another go and see if they fixed some of these issues. I try to load up the app but it has forgotten who I am. It says: enter your phone number to sign in. I give it my number and it prompts me to set up a new account. But I already have an account and it has my number. I can’t figure out how to just login so I go along with it. It asks for my number again on the second screen (I just gave you my number). I fill it all out again, and then it seems to recognize I already have an account and prompts me for a password. I try a password but it says I’ve exceeded the number of characters for the username. I don’t even know what my username is. So I decided to try the “reset password” link. Which then asks for my email for the 3rd time. I receive an email and am able to reset my password.

Upon password reset I’m finally back in the app, but now it’s asking me who my kids are. But the kids are already set up in the app. I’m so confused. I obviously have an account tied to the kids that’s why I was able to reset my password. What’s going on here?

Greenlight: please, hire a user experience professional. Has nobody on your dev team ever actually used your app or gone through the login and password flow?

Again the product is promising but you guys need to put a lot more work in on the dev side of things.

Just to clarify: I am not a parent of a child using this app.

My Dad signed me up for this app about 6 months ago and it works well. I’m 16 and homeschooled which makes it a little harder to open an account with a bank, thus why we decided to use this service.

The app has improved quite a bit after recent updates, however it’s far from perfect. These are my main annoyances with it currently:

1: Can we please stop having ads for sweepstakes and other things in the main interface/page? It’s very annoying. I don’t care about any of the challenges or sweepstakes, I just want to see my spending history and useful information. I would love it if this stuff got its own tab like investing and saving so I don’t ever have to look at it.

2: The spending history tab is not helpful. A massive annoyance is not knowing what my balance was prior to a specific payment.

I have a specific subscription I’m paying for monthly. For some reason it tends to say the payment was declined, however when I check my account it looks as if I paid and nothing happened.

When I look at the “recent history” section on the main page, it shows that it was declined, but when I tap to view my entire spending history it doesn’t show up as declined. This makes it very confusing, and sometimes it’s hard to tell if I’ve been charged or not. Especially when I wasn’t entirely sure what my account balance was prior to purchase.

(I’ve triple checked all my info on the site and it functions perfectly fine, it never complains about declined payments.)

I would appreciate it if in the “spending history” tab it also showed my balance prior to purchase for every purchase. This would make it a lot easier to tell what I actually spent in a “payment declined” situation like mine.

For example: If Billy had $20 in his spending account and was charged $5 when he got a coffee, it would show up how it is now “$5 spent at Café” but then you would add a “$20-$5” on the right of the place you spent the money at. This would make the tab actually useful as I could see how much I had before I spent the money.

3: Why aren’t dividend yields for applicable stocks under the stock details in the investment tab?! This is a big factor for me when choosing which stocks to buy as I like to cashflow them. It’s very annoying that I have to switch to another app (Yahoo Finance, TradingView) just to get details on if they pay a dividend, how much said dividend is, etc.

4: Can we have dark mode compatibility for iOS? I’d like to not burn my retinas every time I use the app lol.

Other than these main complaints, it seems to work well for me!

My two kids are 12 and 9. We had dawdled on giving them an allowance because we couldn’t face the hassle of needing exact change every week. Plus, a lot of the purchases they want to make are online or just easier with a credit card. So, Greenlight was a good fit for what we needed. And it has been working well for the past month that we’ve been using it.

Two areas for improvement that I will highlight. One that the interface is not completely intuitive. To set an allowance or chores, you use the Earn section. But to give your child money once (typical scenario— someone gives my kid a $20 bill for babysitting for a couple hours and she asks me to put it on her Greenlight), you use the Spend section, even though they are not spending it on anything.

My other quibble is with the parent wallet idea. The way Greenlight works, you establish a parent wallet that has a certain amount of money in it, say $50. Allowances come from that pool of money. When the parent wallet gets low it can be automatically replenished. I think the reason they do this is that they get to hold the money and the company can invest it. This is also how scooter sharing companies make some of their money, and insurance companies too... they get to invest your premium while waiting for claims. I don’t really want to lend money to the Greenlight company for zero interest, while I shoulder the risk that they will go out of business and I’ll lose access to the money. Does that seem paranoid? I have $10 on my account with a scooter company. They’ve pulled all their scooters from my city so there’s no way I can spend that now.

In terms of the implementation of the parent wallet, you can set it so that if there isn’t enough money in the parent wallet to pay allowances, the allowances will be automatically paid from your checking account. Since I don’t want to keep a big parent wallet balance, I have turned this feature on several times. Somehow it turns itself off every week and then allowances don’t get paid. I should only have had to set this feature once and the system shouldn’t ask again. (Unless the company is subtly trying to convince me to keep Moore in my parent wallet?) In the scenario where allowances don’t get paid because autofunding is off, I should have the option to turn autofunding on and then try to pay the allowances again. Instead, paying allowances seems to be a one shot deal. If the first attempt fails for any reason you have to give the allowance manually (in the Spend section as I mentioned above).

Look at the length of this review. Here, I’m actually a satisfied customer and I have to keep all these balls in the air. I think for a grandparent or someone less computer savvy, it would be hard.

Well initially I did this For the $60 fetch reward points that we were supposed to get which I don’t even think we got. I have young teen so I thought this is a good idea to try and it was before Christmas so I thought it would be a cool Christmas present but the five dollar fee is an inconvenience and the fact that I can’t transfer money back-and-forth between my bank account is also inconvenient.
I also don’t like that there is a fee every time I have to add money ,well I don’t know if they’re still is but when I signed up it said $20 every time I want to add money With the first time being free. The idea of being able to design their own cards with whatever picture they wanted was awesome idea And I’m sure a lot of the stuff in the emails I keep getting sent is all good ideas as well but the price thing has kind of got me before even looking at any of that. What I mean is that my son told me about the Step card and asked me If I could learn about it and sponsor him and it ended up being really easy and I can transfer money back-and-forth to my bank account for free and send money to my kids for free and They charge a free ATMs but they reimburse me for it right away. And the only downfall I found with them so far is that each one of my kids has to have a separate phone number that goes through the actual phone company so not like text now and my kids don’t all have their own phone line so that is a little bit inconvenient but not too bad. So with all that being said it stops me from Even reading Green Light emails. Well until I See free this and free that. Also I remember it saying that I needed to pay $20 every time I wanted to add money on the Greenlight card and that definitely would be an inconvenience. My problem now is that when I set up the Greenlight account I put $15 in it, five for each of my 3 kids. My son used his right away but my daughters has just been sitting in there since. My daughter was asking me for $10 for something or another online and I remembered about that money and told her she could use it ,this would be her first time using her card. Somehow along the way the app got an download it from my phone so I re-downloaded it and was trying to log in to Verify how the other $10 was distributed but Cannot remember the username to log on. When I hit the forgot password button it said it sent a link to my email to reset but when I got to my email and clicked on the reset button it just took me to a blank white screen, That wasn’t my only problem though, it did not tell me my user name either and that was what I needed to know in the first place. It asked for a username or a phone number to get started and the phone number I no longer have and cannot remember the username and there was another button that said forgot your username but when I clicked on it , it just said find out in parents app but I am the parent and there is no other app for parents that is separate. I’m really frustrated at this point and was not a good experience for my daughters First time use of the card.

I’ve had this for several months. I want to say so many great things about this app, but a HUGE FATAL FLAW that touches on privacy and other issues is that any other adult you invite to contribute money can see your wallet and they can see yours. I invited my ex-wife, but recently when attempting to add funds, it tried to add them from her bank account. She was charged a bank fee that I’m now having to reimburse her for because I didn’t select my account from the wallet. I shouldn’t see any funding sources when I log in except for my own! I’m what other world or app would this be okay?!? I’ve sent a few requests that this be changed in the app. They continue to take my $4.99 a month and it’s a great app if you’re a single parent but not if others are involved. Greenlight should fix this immediately! I’m an app developer and understand what it takes and it really shouldn’t be difficult. If I’m the one adding a funding source under my login, those funding sources are the only options I should have and not the possibility of using my ex-wife’s bank account to fund the wallet. Very frustrating because it’s a great app and service but I’ll have to find a different solution now.

After 4 emails back and forth and 3 phone calls, we may finally have a working card. The app makes the process sound easy but it doesn’t tell you that if you and your spouse have a joint banking account, their information must be submitted when initially setting up the account or the account gets frozen with no notification to you. Your card arrives in the mail with simple instructions to activate it in the app. When you try to do so, you get an error message that makes no sense and doesn’t tell you that your account is frozen or why. I then had to email a picture of my husband’s ID, add him to the account, and he was to get a text linking him to the account. After 3 tries he still didn’t receive a text. I call customer support again, go through 10 security questions and the agent says she’s activated the account. Then she sees there’s a freeze on my account so I have to talk to a higher level. Ten more security questions and a long hold time with this person and now I MAY have a working card. Way too much hassle and all along I assume I’ve been paying $5 a month and the money I loaded from my bank account to my parent wallet on the app has been inaccessible to me. I hope it gets better from here!

This is one of the worst kid cards by far, It may look cute and helpful but it isn’t. The way it’s set up it’s supposed to help the kid get ready to use a real debit card but it’s completely parental dictatorship. The kid can’t really do anything, the parents do EVERYTHING. On the app you have little areas where the money can go, shop anywhere, shop at the store, any atm, and so on. It’s supposed to help you (the kid) manage your money. But instead of the parents just depositing money into the account and the kids decide or at least have an opinion to decide where the money go they can’t. The parents do and there’s no way the kid can transfer 5$ from the spend anywhere area tab to the use at the store tab because the child has no control of there own money. You would be more in luck just keeping your child’s money in a piggy bank than this. Unless you want your child consistently requesting money as they can’t put money into it at a atm or them asking you if you can stop putting money in the shop anywhere tab and to put half of it into any atm slot. And you have no problem controlling the whole car for them and getting a notification for every time they buy a 5$ fortnight card than go a head. Do you

I’m legally 18, still in high school but I no longer live with or have any contact with my parents due to an abusive situation with years of CPS records. Greenlight support can’t do anything to remove them as guardians on the account to give me control. I have emails of my pay stub proving that I earned all the money on the account and I was never given allowance so none of the money was from them. Greenlight is in no way responsible for my delt-hand in life however any credit union or bank I’ve talked to automatically hands controls over to a child as soon as they turn 18 if it’s in their name. I believe they should have someway to manage a situation like this the way any other bank would and for these reasons I have found it frustrating and unreliable. All the money I had so far scraped together to get myself through college to build a stable life for myself is now unaccessible. I have all the documentation I would need to take my parents to court but unfortunately no funds. There are many wonderful reliable parents out there and this app is great for them but there’s no insurance or help for anyone who is or has been in an unreliable environment.

I am fortunate to even have a place to stay for now.

We loved this at first. Convenient, great way to teach our daughter about managing savings and money. I had been telling lots of my friends about it. Until we had a problem. She made a purchase at a store in the mall, the next day or showed the same charge 3 times, over drafting her account. We contacted Green light got told we needed to work with the store itself. Months later and back and fourth with both and it’s still not fixed.
Than a charge popped up at 11:30 at night for Amazon Prime video for $9. My daughter is in bed at the time and doesn’t have a Amazon account. We figured someone stole her card number. It happens we get that, we shut off the card and contacted Green light. They tell us it’ll get fixed and they’ll send us a new card. Easy right. Wrong. Two later we get a message saying $14.99 is credited back to our account. But where? It’s not in the parent account, kids account or our bank account. We try calling, they say they see the issue but we have to “write a letter and they’ll investigate the issue”. What is this 1950?
This place is shady, and clearly has issue with security. We’re now attempting to just cancel the card altogether, which is also proving to be a mess.
DON’T DO IT!

The technical glitches with this app outweigh its benefits. The bank information saved to the parent account to fund the kids’ accounts has to be re-entered nearly every time I try to fund the card. I’ve tried to transfer money for a kid out-of-town and been unable to do so because the funding won’t work. The bank info is there - you can see a portion of it, but the “help” response is to delete it and re-enter it. Unless you walk around with your bank account number memorized, this isn’t a fix. The kid is stranded and you’re stuck fussing with the account numbers late at night when you get to where you have them saved. Just save yourself the time and money and give them a debit card tied to your checking account.

As a follow-up - I called the customer service line in the developer’s response and was told someone would call me back with a fix. Also received an email from Tristan asking if he could call me. I said yes, if he could provide a fix for having to re-enter account information every time I want to transfer money, if I have to re-enter each time I would need to cancel. I did. It get a call, but Five minutes later, my kids’ cards were canceled! I guess that speaks to the app’s abilities and customer service.

We’ve been Greenlight customers for about a year. We feel the fee is worth the value and convenience it provides us with 3 kids. My frustration is with the app update. It absolutely looks gorgeous, honestly my compliments to the designers, but I think this is a case where design lost sight of what’s important to customers. Before, I could easily see all information I wanted on the dashboard (the balance of each bucket of money for each kid). I’m now having to click 2 or 3 screens deep to see that information. It took me some effort to even find where the “giving” bucket went which is hidden at the bottom of the kids screen. What frustrates me is the lack of customization. Each kid is different. For example, we use “savings” as college savings (and transfer out to 529s every year, a process that has to involve customer service because transfer OUT is conveniently not a feature that was prioritized to build) and “spend” is our kids money. They have goals they want to save their “spend” money for but you can only set a goal in the “savings” bucket. I feel bad saying it because I can tell they must have spent a lot of time and effort on this redesign, but this update is pushing me away as a customer wondering if I can figure out how to do this on my own again.

It started out to be an amazing card. BUTT! First you can’t transfer more than a certain amount from your bank account to the cards within a 7 day period. Due to the fact I give my kids and godchild money for Christmas (and I didn’t realize this) some had to wait until after the New Years to get it all. That wasn’t a deal breaker but here what was. My child account got hacked, called the company and the rep on the other end stated that it was ppl from India and there are aware of this happening. Great! At least that what I assumed. So when can he get the money back on his card? 90 days from the claim. WAIT WHAT! You know this is happening and he has to wait 90 days. YUP! Called like 70 days later to check the status and they said it wasn’t done yet. When I stated a real bank would of had this done within 30 days I was told by manager this wasn’t a regular bank and it will go back on his cards in 90 days. Now mind you these are kids. No kid should have to wait that long. While his was pending reimbursement my daughter card got hack as well, just lucky she had less than $5 in hers. I canceled all my children and godchild and open a free account for each child with Chase. Then called all of my friend and family who got a card for there children and they also all cancelled.

Until my funding source (debit card) expired So I ordered a new debit card shortly after with the same card number and same name but it had a different ccv and expiry date. (A NEW DEBIT CARD) this app won’t accept it and Im not giving Greenlight my bank account number or a credit card number. Your app doesn’t recognize that my card is new and valid so your app says I have to contact customer service. Your app is broken. Also last month I tried to cancel my account. I “signed the form” and after a few days a customer service rep emailed me back saying that I had to add a funding source to the app so that they could refund my remaining money back to me ~$4. I couldn’t enter in my debit card and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of entering in my bank account for four dollars. (idk why they couldn’t just cut me a check?) PLUS you have to add $20 or more to reload, which I didn’t have at the time so I did not respond and they emailed me saying that “this issue has been resolved or ticket closed” so I’m like cool account closed…NO now they charged me my monthly fee instead of canceling and I assume they will just keep doing that until I owe them big time. Guess I gotta give them my bank info so they can STOP CHARGING ME A FEE AND CLOSE MY ACCOUNT Don’t do Greenlight - BROKEN APP/HASSLE TO CANCEL/FEES.

I really wish I could give you guys a 0 star rating but I will settle for the 1 star. I got this card for my kids and it was fine at first until they started receiving gifts from their grandparents. My dad tried to load money to the card for my child but it didn’t go through on our end even though they took the money out of his account, he did receive a refund after threatening to report them. They ended up locking my kids out of their account and said that I must repay every deposit my kids received from their relatives(even though nobody disputed the transaction) all because we didn’t load the money on the card the correct way. I finally got through to customer service and they told me that they locked the card’s because we didn’t load it money on the card as a gift. They told me in order for me to get their cards unlocked I have to repay them over $300 which is what my kids received in all from their grandparents during their time using this card. Why should I have to pay you to unlock my kids accounts for money that was never disputed, by any bank? Don’t make any sense to me and customer service didn’t make the situation better. I will be reporting you guys because I still have money in my wallet in the account and I can’t access it and my child do as well. Horrible company and I do not recommend anyone use them either. Get it together Greenlight.

I have used this card for my three kids for quite a while. For the most part, I like it. There is one area that is NOT true on the write up - as I search for a new card. The write up says “the kid can’t charge if they don’t have the money” - or something like that. NOT true. Just today, the kids account was overdrawn and pulled from the parents account. I don’t care about the $21, the money was there - it’s just teaching the kid it’s ok to spend more than what you have.

I called customer service and they told me that if the spend anywhere is used, it will pull the overdraft from the parents account. If not enough there- it then pulls from the funding account on file. I want my kid to get denied and have to contact me if he needs more money. He needs to learn to budget. This card is not doing this AND the write up is WRONG. Don’t believe it if this is important to you. Customer service said I could set specific limits on different stores for spend anywhere;however, I want him to have the ability to spend his money wherever he wants - but only the amount he has available. Very frustrated and not hacked off that they didn’t keep to what they had stated. Normally I’d give a good star rating. Based on the aspect they don’t do as I thought and just confirmed in their write up, I lowered the rank quite a bit. Hate not being told how things are really handled.

For a younger kid this is ok though one could quibble about the monthly fee. But for older kids, I find this service frustrating especially as my 16 year old started to run errands for me. I quickly found there were unadvertised limits not only on his card, but what I could transfer from my own bank account. These were hard limits that couldn’t even be overcome with a call to customer service. Now, as my son is old enough for his own normal account with no fee, I went to close my GL account today. Again, functionality is lacking. I can’t cancel or close my account online. I have to submit a request via a form. This should be fundamental functionality and feels manipulative that it is not available. I am also unable to remove my bank account as a funding source from the system because it requires at least one. Why? This also feels manipulative to customers. This is a privacy nightmare and I have no idea when my “close/cancel request” is taken care of on their end if my bank account is unlinked or removed or what? The monthly subscription should be separate (with the ability to enter a debit/credit card/use Apple subscription) from my bank account as a funding source for use in the functionality of the system. I can change / get a new card easy, but its much more difficult for me to change my actual bank account. I don’t appreciate it being linked to this app without any control to remove it.

This is coming from a kid using the app. It’s a great concept and I like being able to buy things independently without my parents help, but me and my sibling keep getting logged out and it’s hard to keep track of how much money I have, and I can’t save money on the app either because of it. It’s to the point where I’m asking my mom to buy stuff for me with her cards and keeping physical cash on me and not even using the card and I feel really really bad because my mom is paying a lot for this. I’ve tried logging back in with the current password on my account and I’m 100% sure I did everything right because then it tells me that my accounts suspended and I have to reset the password. And I do reset the password but then it just keeps happening over and over. And now I reset the password and it says my account is still locked and I’m just completely not able to access the app anymore. I realize there’s a number for support that pops up when this happens, and we’re probably going to call the number soon now, but it’s just extremely difficult and complicated for no reason. Also, I don’t know if it’s related but it seems to happen every time I make a purchase that’s at least $20 or over. (I forgot to add, but in the beginning it was telling me that my mom was already registered and that she just needed to add me to her account or something like that even though I already was added. Changing the password used to fix that, but not anymore.)

Today marks the third time I have called in regards to a request to cancel my account. I got these cards for my girls but then with COVID we didn’t need them because we didn’t go anywhere. Instead we opted for iPhone Apple Pay because they did online shopping instead.
The fist time I called they said no problem we will refund you the $20 in your wallet and you’re all set.
Second time, I’m sorry we can’t refund the monthly fee because you used the card. Mind you we never used the card and after 40 minutes finally the lady said I was able to verify cards weren’t used would you like 3 free months - I said no I want to cancel and get a refund to the account in file. She finally gave up and said okay 5-7 days for refund and then bank processing time. Cool expect it in 3 week max.
Third time, it’s been over a month. I have called again and the lady tells me nope your account is active and you have $19 in your parent wallet. I argue and say why if the money was never used and you have continued to charge a monthly fee from my account. It’s my third call cancel and refund. She said of I’ll give you six free months. It was as if she wasn’t listening and it was infuriating. So now again my “refund has been processed and accounts cancelled”.
Quite frankly I would not recommend solely based on that because if you cannot allow the parent to control the entire membership in the app and require to call for it stop trying to upwelling and do what the customer is asking.

While I understand not everyone has had the same experience as I have, I need to share my experience. From the very beginning of signing up, I had issues. It took us 4 months to receive the actual card in the mail. They continued to charge my account the $4.99 per month even though the card hadn’t been received or activated. I had to continue to call and get the charges removed and go through the whole process again and again. Once we received the card we didn’t have much trouble and honestly it was worth the $4.99 a month. Then recently I went into my parents wallet to add money and received a error saying they were having trouble connecting to my bank and it said a different company, not Greenlight. So I called the customer service and the rep didn’t know what I was talking about. All she kept saying was I recommend you adding a debit card. When I finally got an answer that the company that came up on the error message was a legitimate company, I got off the phone and went through the process to receive yet another error message. Then when I went to try and add money again into my wallet it said I did not have a bank account linked to my wallet. I called the customer service back and they couldn’t tell me where my bank info went or why it wasn’t still connected. My concern was that when it said it was having trouble connecting it went into my bank account. Needless to say I canceled our account and would highly recommend finding a different avenue to provide money to your kids.

I will continue to add to this review so people understand not to use this service: i am going on a month and a half of debate with trying to get my money back. They have now said that they cant return the money because the card was deactivated. It was deactivated because people were stealing the money. ummm. U should not be in this business if you do not have the technology to figure this out. This is a scam and they will do AnYTHING to make sure they don’t have to take accountability for any issues. On a side note, they merged two complaints together so I was on an email chain with someone I do not know and had to follow along with his issues. I am sure that might be a confidentially issue. But they will respond to this and say “they cannot find an account” -

I am going to add to this review: if you are a parent looking to get your child this service please don’t do it. There is not any type of fraud protection and customer service is not good. I have been consistently working on an issue for over a month with no resolution. We have had this app/card for a year or so and my son rarely uses it. The other day there was fraud on his account and his spending was completely cleared out. I have reached out to Greenlight and literally have to jump through so many hoops to get our money back….IF we ever get it back. Please know before signing up that this system is not secure. There are very few, if any, policies for fraud when your account is compromised and a good chance you will lose a lot of money - I guess that is a good way to teach our kids that nothing is safe.

They advertise that you have the ability to place limits on your Children’s accounts. You have the freedom to assign when, where and how much they spend but that’s not entirely accurate. They fail to mention (unless you go look in their fine print which is not available on the app) that they have a daily ATM limit of $105 which includes the ATM fee. I have 2 young teenagers who have just started working. I transfer money from their paychecks to their accounts in small increments so they can be responsible with their spending.
One of them is going on a trip and rather than send a large amount of cash I placed that in the ATM spending limit. Imagine my surprise when I receive multiple notifications that my child’s attempts to withdraw money from the ATM were declined. There are many places that are cash only on this trip he is taking. Not allowing me the freedom to give my child the amount I want is unacceptable especially when I am paying for this service. At least place realistic limits for ATM transactions. I’ve withdrawn all my money and canceled this service. It’s such a shame because I thought it was going well up until this. Before you reply to this with “this information is available on our website” just know that many people don’t visit your website. I downloaded the app based off a friend’s recommendation. I signed up from the app and NO WHERE in the explanation of the “freedom” it allows you as a parent does it highlight this major flaw. I wouldn’t have bothered signing up had I known it upfront. Now I have to wait 5-7 business days for almost $500 to be deposited back into my account.