Amazon Welcomes Teens With New Parent-Controlled Shopping Allowance
12 October 2017 - 12:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Katherine Bindley
Not so long ago, an allowance was something that involved a
parent producing dollar bills from a wallet, and the child spending
said dollars at the mall. That sounds quaint compared with Amazon
Inc.'s new program, launching Wednesday, which lets parents
manage--and fund--online-shopping accounts for their teens.
When parents create an account, tied to payment methods of their
choice, they can invite up to four teen users to create unique
logins and download the Amazon shopping app to their own
devices.
"We know teens are all about their phones," said Michael Carr,
vice president of Amazon Households. "It's basically hard to get
them not to look at their phones and so it's going to be a mobile
experience."
The teens get free rein to shop around--to a point. How much a
teen is allowed to spend and what they buy can be, but doesn't have
to be, parent-regulated.
Every time their teen places an order, parents can choose to
receive an approval request via text or email (though not from the
Amazon app). The notification includes a description of the item, a
picture and the total cost. By replying to the request, parents
have the ability to grant or reject the potential purchase.
Family spending features aren't new to the tech giants: Alphabet
Inc.'s Google introduced the Google Play Family Library last year
and Apple Inc. has Family Sharing, which among other things lets
parents approve digital media purchases by their children. Amazon
itself offers child-safe, all-you-can-eat media for its younger
users in the form of its subscription FreeTime Unlimited plans, but
it's venturing into new territory by allowing children to shop in
the store.
"We're empowering the parents. So we're not going to try to make
decisions for them," said Mr. Carr. "But we're going to give them
the information they need to make those decisions."
Teens get the option to include a message (read: plea) with
their request, such as "This is the game I was telling you about"
or "Everyone in my school has this."
Parents wishing to experiment in exercises of trust can choose
to give their teen a spending limit per order and opt out of the
item-approval step all together, leaving them with a notification
that includes the details of what's been purchased.
Parents can't micromanage their teens' purchases further,
however. There's no option, for instance, to specify that the
virtual allowance can only be spent on books, not games.
Still, Mr. Carr said the program allows parents to be more aware
of what their children are buying than they would be otherwise.
"The way it is today, parents have to give their teenager their
credit card or their login details. They're really not in the loop
on any of these things," he said.
If for some reason parents completely miss a no-no purchase,
there's still recourse, said Amazon. Parents can "cancel and return
any item in accordance with Amazon's policies."
Though the program is intended for 13- to 17-year-olds, it's the
parents who ultimately choose who gets a login--Amazon isn't in the
business of checking IDs.
"We're not going to bust into your house and try to verify the
age of your kid," said Mr. Carr.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 11, 2017 09:14 ET (13:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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