Prepaid cards for kids & students: a parent’s guide
After the 2024–2025 mass-discontinuance wave, the playbook for a child’s first card looks different. Here’s how to do it cleanly in 2026.
Key takeaways
Giving your child their first card is a real step. It’s a budgeting lesson disguised as a piece of plastic, and the right setup keeps you in control of spending limits while still giving them a small amount of independence. This guide walks through what’s actually issuable in the Philippines in 2026, what’s changed since most online articles were written, and the practical setup for each option.
What changed in 2024–2025
The Philippine prepaid-card market thinned out dramatically over the last 18 months. Several of the cards older articles point parents toward simply aren’t issued anymore:
- BDO Cash Card, long the default "first card" handed out at a BDO branch, was discontinued in March 2025.
- UnionBank EON Prepaid Visa: discontinued July 22, 2024.
- BPI Amore Prepaid Visa: discontinued December 27, 2024.
- RCBC MyWallet (a separate product also marketed to students): discontinued November 11, 2024.
If you arrived here from an article that recommends any of those, the advice is stale. Don’t spend an afternoon at a branch trying to sign your child up for one.
A note on “Maya for Juniors”
“Maya for Juniors” is likely discontinued as a named product. Some older guides treat it as a separate card or wallet for kids. As far as Maya now markets things, a wallet for ages 7 to 17 isn’t a distinct product at all. It’s a regular Maya account with a parent-consent KYC step layered on top. If you see "Maya for Juniors" referenced anywhere, treat it as legacy branding for the same workflow described below.
Option 1: BDO Pay Card (the Cash Card replacement)
The BDO Pay Card is BDO’s official replacement for the retired Cash Card and is the closest like-for-like for parents who used to walk into a branch and ask for "the kid card". It’s a reloadable Mastercard managed entirely inside the BDO Pay app rather than at a branch.
The setup pattern:
- You open a BDO Pay account in the parent’s name.
- You request the BDO Pay Card from inside the app.
- You load funds and hand the card to your child, retaining the wallet credentials yourself.
The card itself has no annual fee. Loading from any BDO source is free; loading from an external bank may incur a small InstaPay or PESONet fee depending on the channel. The clear advantage over the old Cash Card is in-app visibility: every swipe shows up on your phone the moment it happens, which makes both safety and teaching moments easier.
Option 2: A parent-managed Maya account (ages 7 to 17)
If your child is comfortable with phone apps, a regular Maya wallet is the more modern setup. Maya doesn’t require the account holder to be 18, but it does require a parent to complete the consent KYC step before the wallet is fully verified.
The setup pattern:
- Install Maya on the child’s phone (or a phone you hand them).
- Register with the child’s details. Maya will detect they’re under 18 and ask for parental consent.
- The parent fills the consent form (digitally) and supplies their own ID for verification.
- Once verified, the wallet can hold up to ₱100,000, request a free virtual Mastercard, and optionally request a physical card.
Maya works well for online shopping (Shopee, Lazada, Steam, Netflix) and for tap-to-pay. There’s no annual fee. The physical Mastercard ships free during periodic promos and otherwise has a small one-time fee.
Which one to pick
If your child is young, doesn’t carry a smartphone, or you want a card that physically lives in their wallet without a wallet app behind it, BDO Pay Card is closer to the old Cash Card experience.
If your child already uses their own phone and you want a card that integrates with online shopping and in-app spending controls, Maya is the easier modern setup.
There’s no reason you can’t use both. A Maya wallet for online purchases and a BDO Pay Card for offline / cash-replacement use is a common pattern.
Setup hygiene either way
- Turn on transaction alerts. Every swipe should generate a push notification on the parent’s phone, useful for both safety and for talking through purchases later.
- Set a top-up cadence, not a balance. Loading ₱500 every Monday teaches a different lesson than handing over a ₱10,000 balance.
- Disable international transactions until you actually need them. Both apps let you toggle this per-card.
- Keep one card out of the wallet. Most apps support both a virtual and a physical card. Leaving the physical card at home for in-store purchases means a lost wallet can be cancelled without losing day-to-day spending.
What about the school savings account?
A no-maintaining-balance savings account in the child’s name (the BDO Basic Deposit Account, opened in-branch with the parent, is one option) covers the "save" half of the conversation. The card setup above covers the "spend" half. The two together are a complete first-money setup without spending a peso on monthly fees.