Temporary prepaid debit card for American 13 year old going to Israel

[Chava61]

Originally Posted by Pruzhany

Go to Amazon and order her a money belt. Many locations don't take credit/debit cards and finding a ATM that takes a US one is a pain. Give her $500 in cash and have her convert $200 to NIS at the airport. The rest keep in small bills as depending where she is going might take dollars.

Keep in mind that putting a few hundred dollars on an American debit card doesn't directly translate directly to NIS. There will be multiple fees deducted (the amount is decided by each individual bank it passes through from Israel to the US) and your daughter won't know about it (and how much she actually has) until it's too late.

Originally Posted by JanND

Just go to Sam's or Walmart and buy a large denomination VISA gift card. I have sent these to my grandchildren before, never a problem spending them.....but that is in the U.S.

Buy a smaller denomination card to practice with this week. Let her go with you and get a hang for using this card. I'm sure if you find something better, the school will let you replace the card before the trip. They want your child to have her own spending money.

My Grandchildren went on trips like this, but in the U.S. so I would want to talk to a parent who's child went last year and ask questions if I were you.

There is no problem in Israel to find an ATM that takes a foreign/non-Israeli debit card. It will be much more difficult for the child to convert US dollars to Israeli shekels if the group doesn't make a special stop at an airport bank whether it be on arrival in Israel or at any other Israeli bank. Also banks usually take much higher fees for cash conversions at a bank teller than ATM fees which are quite low (and sometimes zero for foreign debit cards!) at Israeli banks.

Again many of the prepaid VISA gift cards sold here in the USA are only valid for usage in the USA and can't be used overseas. So the OP needs to check on that before purchasing them.

[7 Wishes]

Thanks for all the responses:

1) Joint account at a bank not an option.....nowadays they usually want you to have a quite large balance or charge a lot of fees. To give you an idea on something different, we used to have a safety deposit box at HSBC, but they told us you need to have $10,000 (yes, $10K) in total dealings with them to have one (by dealings I mean assets + debt, yes they let you count debt) anymore and only "grandfathered" us in for a year before forcing us to close it.

2) I thought about the "Visa gift card" but not sure how easily you can use it in foreign countries, at least outside of North America and perhaps the UK.

3) I honestly thought of the money belt idea (ha ha!) but school won't let you take cash, they want you to have the debit card and get cash there.


However, I did talk to some parents of kids who went on it last year and they heavily recommended the AAA Travel Visa Card. Much less fees, you don't have to be a AAA member to get one (you just pay $2 more for the card if you are not one) and you can go to any AAA office and get it the same day. So that's what we are going to do. Thanks everyone!