If you prefer to avoid handing over your credit card outright whenever your teens want or need something on Amazon, the retail giant has you covered.
If you prefer to avoid handing over your credit card outright whenever your teens want or need something on Amazon, the retail giant has you covered.
Today, Amazon unveiled their all-new « teen accounts » feature, allowing kids aged 13-17 to browse, purchase and stream Amazon products and content using their own private account.
Teens don’t get total freedom, though. Parents are able to select which payment methods and shipping addresses they’d like their teens to have access to and will receive an automated request for approval whenever a purchase is attempted. Upon receiving such a message (via email and/or text messaging), parents can reply with « Y » or « N » to approve or deny the purchase.
To streamline the process further, teens can also add personalized notes to each product they select for approval, allowing them to offer their parents a bit of justification for the products they want or need (such as important school supplies).
If you place a bit more trust in your kids (or if you simply don’t want to constantly approve or deny purchases), you can scrap the approval system altogether and opt instead to set specific spending limits.
One major benefit this program offers families is the ability to share Prime membership features. As long as their parents have an active Amazon Prime subscription, teens can access Twitch Prime, Prime Video and free two-day Prime shipping on select products at no extra cost.