For example, my teenage son had a tax refund coming from his summer job. Since his prepaid card has bank routing and account numbers, we were able to provide that information to TurboTax and have his refund delivered right to his card via direct deposit. Now that’s a serious motivator for a teen to learn how to prepare a tax return. Sweet!
Where do you find your card’s direct deposit bank information? You should be able to find your card’s routing and account numbers on the printed information that comes with your card when you first receive it. In the case of your FamZoo card, look for the Direct Deposit Form at the bottom of the page to which your card is attached. You’ll find the routing and account numbers in the lower right corner of the form as shown below.
Note: As of the transition to our new chip based cards in December 2020, the routing and account numbers are no longer printed on the paper card carrier. Instead, you’ll find them online on the Card Information screen.
Important note: your prepaid card’s 16 digit bank account number may not be the same as the 16 digit number printed on its face. Even more confusing, the name of the bank associated with the direct deposit routing number may be different from the issuing bank that is printed on the back of your prepaid card. To find the name of the bank associated with the routing number, you can just Google it with a search like: “routing number 111924680”.
So, before you sign up for a teen prepaid card, be sure to confirm that it supports direct deposit. It’s a super handy feature. Who knows? It might even spur your child to go get a summer job and prepare her own taxes!
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9 comments:
This capability could be the determining factor for me signing up! I've had an account with one of the big name banks that's (rightfully, imho) been the subject of many protests recently & although I tried a credit union as an alternative, the one I found just honestly wasn't convenient enough; however, I noticed US Bank is on the list of free ATM withdraws for the FamZoo cards (where I live, at least) which would be very convenient ~ I suppose my main concern would be how safe using FamZoo in this manner would be...? Are direct deposits FDIC insured & what not? (To be honest, I'm not even sure what worries I should have, lol, I'm a single mom whose only income currently is SSDI so most of the various benefits most banks offer for accounts above their "basic" services, like interest, aren't available to me anyways :-P I guess I'm just skeptical as prepaid cards have often seemed to be a rip off &/or exploitative but this seems to be created with a radically fair approach!) I would *love* to not only stop participating in my particular "too big to fail" financial instution but to support an organization that seems to share my values :-) Any/all feedback's appreciated (esp regarding how realistic it would be to have my income directly deposited into a FamZoo account & use that as our primary finacial institution) Thanks!
Hi and thank you for your interest in FamZoo. (BTW: You can talk to us directly via http://famzoo.com/contactus if you'd like to discuss via email - might be a bit more convenient.)
ATM withdrawals have no surcharge as long as the ATM you select is listed as being part of the MoneyPass network. Just visit http://moneypass.com to look up the ATMs nearest you. They have a mobile app too.
The Card Accounts are FDIC insured. (Mentioned in our Cardholder Agreement hich you can find here: http://famzoo.com/legal/CardholderAgreement.pdf )
You can indeed set up direct deposit to a FamZoo card - parents who do so with their employer typically designate a fraction of their paycheck.
FamZoo is not specifically designed as a primary institution replacement for adults - it's really focused on helping parents teach their kids good money habits. The current balance limit on a FamZoo card is $5,000, and we do not have check writing capabilities. Those two limitations alone would make it unsuitable as a primary institution replacement for most adults, so I can't recommend it as such.
Regards, Bill
Thanks for the prompt reply (the responsiveness is another thing that's really impressed me about FamZoo so far)! I hope this forum isn't inconvenient or inappropriate for you (on my phone, so it's easier to review what was written staying on this site, lol)
I saw the ATM network resource (that's how I knew US Bank offered fee-free access in my area) & that direct deposit was possible ~ but thanks for noting where those resources are in your reply (will definitely help me relocate info later)
I understand FamZoos financial literacy foundation & was initially interested in it for strictly for that purpose but was a bit weary of getting into a service with associated fees (even though yours are incredibly reasonable, especially when trying to compare to other systems because there's nothing that I've found which comes anywhere close!) however the potential to replace my bank with it made me much more interested/excited about the potential.
While I understand the demographics most likely to utilize the service would need a higher balance limit & the ability to write checks, I don't (my gross monthly income is less than one third of the cap & I still have checks from an address 4 moves & 7 years ago, lol)
Are there any other issues you could see interfering with the use of FamZoo as a primary financial institution in my case (would it be bad for you in some way?)
Thanks again!
Thanks again for the links, just read the cardolder agreement but it kept referring to the schedule of fees which wasnt included ~ do you have a link for that?
No problem with this forum. It can be slightly less responsive since I'm the only one that monitors it systematically at the moment (unlike our support via the contact-us route), but it is in no way inappropriate :-)
It would only be bad for you to use our service if we mismanaged your expectations, I just wanted to be super clear about the scenario we focus on - parents teaching kids good money habits - because that drives all of our decision making and priorities when it comes to functionality, pricing, marketing, branding, etc.
One other issue might be online bill pay - we don't focus on that because it's typically not something kids have to deal with. Instead, we focus on expense sharing within a family - i.e., a kid picking up a portion of a shared family expense - like a cell phone: http://blog.famzoo.com/p/famzoo-card-faqs.html#billshare-setup.
In terms of fees, our whole thinking on our card pricing through FamZoo.com is that there should just be a single monthly fee instead of "gotcha" per transaction fees - parents don't need any more surprises when it comes to kids and money. So, the only fees are the monthly subscription and one-time extra card fees described here: http://blog.famzoo.com/p/famzoo-card-faqs.html#how-much Those fees are subject to change - we're still collecting data on what the most appropriate monthly fee should be. It depends on usage patterns because we incur costs for certain transactions - like ATM usage for example - that we need to cover with our monthly fee plus some reasonable profit in order to run a viable business. I suspect our current fees are too low to be sustainable, so I anticipate them having to rise modestly at some point in the future, but I don't have enough data to know exactly when or by how much yet. The other possibility is that we find an alternate business model which allows us to derive revenue from another source - as long as it's consistent with our values. We generally shy away from advertising related models though because trying to get people to buy random stuff does not match our mission. In any case, we run a very frugal ship, so we have no plans to be unreasonable or overly aggressive when it comes to charging our families - just sensible and predictable. Kinda like what we're trying to teach kids about handling their own money :-)
Thank you for your thoughtful questions,
Bill
How do i find out my cards routing and account number? I don't have the paperwork that came with my card initially.
Tommy, no worries! You can call the 800 number on the back of the card to get the info you need via telephone support: http://blog.famzoo.com/p/famzoo-card-faqs.html#lost-routing-account
I just don't know where my routing number is on my card, I bought it online
The routing and account numbers for a FamZoo card are now accessed online within FamZoo on the Card Information screen. See: http://blog.famzoo.com/p/famzoo-card-faqs.html#routing-account-nums
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