PayPal Student Debit Card

[Zanxnaz]

Has anyone received an email stating that the student debit card service was closing? I received an email that states: Effective November 15, 2016, all student Accounts will be closed, and any remaining funds in them will be transferred to the associated parent’s PayPal account. Are they really terminating this program or is this a spoof email? I just reordered my sons debit card and it arrived last week!

[Voltboy]

YES its true I just got off the phone with them  and they don't care if your leaving or not.  GOOGLE WALLET here i come!!! 

[Zanxnaz]

Google Wallet terminated their service earlier this year.

[genericusername]

Awful.  Poor decision-making all around.  Not even a mention anywhere on their site, and it looks like you can still sign up for a student account.  What are they thinking?

[gives]

I guess it's an easy and quick way to shed customers (apparently they have too many). And I'm not just talking about the student accounts as I plan to close my PayPal account once I transition them to my work's credit union (I'll setup separate accounts, but my name will also be on each of their accounts, I can also do cross account transfers there).

I expect a lot of parents might follow the same thinking, and close their PayPal accounts as well.

For parents that want or need to use a different banking institution than their main one, you can use services like Square Cash (https://cash.me) or Google Wallet (https://www.google.com/wallet/) to send money for free between banking accounts. I use Square Cash all the time to transfer money between my credit union account and my Simple (https://www.simple.com/) account. I could do it directly (bank to bank) but that takes longer, and using Square Cash it's almost instantaneous. I'd switch them over to Simple, but you have to be 18 years old for that.

[bolharr2250]

This is exactly what I plan on doing once I turn 18.

Any opinions on Simple? It looks really cool and the avoid-spending-bill-money looks really cool.

EDIT: I can't seem to find the old student card pages. The new student page is just for a regular Paypal account signup, which offers almost all the features of the student account without the easy monitoring. 

[rolandcw]

Thanks for the recommendation of simple.com. If my kids (all over 18) open simple accounts and their own paypal accounts, I don't see why they couldn't link their simple account to paypal, then I could send money from my paypal to theirs. They just have to login to paypal to send it on to their bank. Not ideal, but no need for yet another service (i.e. Square Cash).

Does Square Cash provide anything more besides adding one step for me and one less for my kids?

[MoneysFriend]

***OPTION***

I too was frustrated when I saw this email.  I started looking and was suprised to find out that Chase Bank offers a a free student checking account.  It is called "Chase High School Checking".  It is for 13-17 year olds and the parent has to be a "co-owner" and it has to be attached to an existing Chase Checking account.  After the student turns 18 the account turns into a regular checking.  If you dont like Chase or dont bank with them I think Bank of America and others offer similar things.

https://www.chase.com/checking/student-checking#!studentchecking:studentdetails

[ShiraYuki]

I got in touch with a rep about this. He said they got the update about terminating Student account but they are not given the specific reason as to why the management is doing this. They were left in the dark again as usual.

[JuliaVersau]

This really sucks. One reason I like the student accounts -- besides the obvious one of shuttling money to my three kids -- is because I can put money there instead of mine. I do this because if I were to croak, it would take them a year to get my money back from PayPal, if they could even do it. It was a security measure for me. ALSO THIS: IF PAYPAL IS ENDING STUDENT ACCOUNTS, why can you still click on "Add Account" under the Student Accounts section? Duh. I am **bleep**. As usual, when dealing with PayPal.

[Christi628]

Yes! two of my children received these emails, today. I can't find anything from PayPal to support this and told my kids not to click any of the links. I'm about to forward the email to PayPal's spoof email inbox for examination. You may want to do the same. The address is spoof@paypal.com.