My 17 year old granddaughter will be going to Europe this summer for an art class....Rome, Florence, Venice, Paris. DD is going crazy trying to find a prepaid ATM card or debit card for her. Your advice to me for my trip was to get the Capital One ATM card which I did and it worked perfectly. Any advice for her? I cannot find the age requirement on the CapOne site.

In a recent article published by Consumer Reports magazine (June 2012), CR concluded what most of us already know - ¨Until prepaid debit cards gain guaranteed protections and lose fee, regular debit cards from a bank or credit union may be a better deal.¨

There should be no reason why your granddaughter cannot have a bank account and associated ATM card allowing her to access funds just like anyone else.

Do NOT get a prepaid card for her - they are total rip-offs.

There's no reason she can't get a bank account and an associated ATM card like anyone else. And even if there were some age requirement, you or some other adult can open an account, put her name on it along with yours, and get her an ATM card. It's that simple.

I don't know what you are referring to about getting a Capital One ATM card. Usually you get an ATM card when you open some kind of bank account, so not sure if that is what you did or not (opened some type of Cap One bank account), or what kind of bank account and if you opened it online or in person. I would presume she could open some kind of bank account if she had a social security number.

I think each state sets the age at which a individual can be the sole account holder to a checkings account. I had to be the principal account holder and my 17yr old daughter was a joint account holder in order for her to have checking account with a debit card in my state.

Very strange that this would be a problem. In France, there are debit cards aimed at the young (or more precisely their parents, starting around age 12 I think, to allow them to learn the use responsibly. They are attached to the main family bank accounts but have monthly or weekly ceilings depending on what the "allowance" is. The Visa or MasterCard affiliation allows them to be used by the young people anywhere in the world.

Very strange to me that this would be a problem. In France, there are all sorts of debit cards aimed at the young (starting at age 12 I think) so that their parents can let them have a card with a monthly or weekly limit, depending on their allowance. They can be used as simple ATM cards or used anywhere in the world with the Visa or MasterCard logo.

I do not believe it is a state issue at all. The Federal Uniform Gift to Minors Act (UGMA/UTMA) allows you to establish a bank/savings/investment accounts for any minor.

Chose a bank/credit union, setup the account, furnish it with the funds you want her to have, give her the associated ATM card.

Have her mom set up a Cap One online joint bank account [just like you did] in both names [hers and your granddaughter's]. Then your granddaughter will get an ATM card to use.

Banking rules and regs have changed mightily since 9/11. Nothing is simple any more. But there are ways to do it.

Can 17 year olds really not have their own bank accounts now? I was 17 for the first couple of months of college and I opened an account that came with an ATM card when I got there. Granted, it was before 9/11.

There is no age limit on the card - there may be on the account holder who puts the money in - but anyone can use the card.

And I have had bank accounts - savings since I was 12 and checking since i was 17 and went away to school. (Perhaps my parents had to sign off - I don;t recall - but the accounts were mine and I dealt with them - depositing and withdrawing money and writing checks - in the last ice age before there were ATMs.)