A mother has warned parents after her "safe" GoHenry debit cards allegedly let her children go into negative balance.
Jennifer voiced her worries on TikTok yesterday, claiming GoHenry has emailed her to say she needs to pay off the negative balances if she wants to continue use the cards.
The company offers prepaid debit cards onto which parents can add money and give to their kids. These cards allow people to regulate how much money their kids are spending.
According to the firm's website, “children can only ever spend the money available on their GoHenry card. There’s no risk of them getting into debt or overdraft.”
But Jennifer says she is "very very confused" as she claims she's already had to $80 (£64) to clear her son's debit, so he could enjoy a meal with friends last week.
Then, she reportedly encountered the same issue with her daughter's account.
"So immediately I knew something was wrong," the mum says in a series of TikTok videos, liked by thousands.
"I have no idea what to do about this."
When the mother contacted GoHenry, it is alleged the company said it experienced "a third-party issue" - but reportedly insisted she still pay off the negative balances. By which time, it is alleged her daughter's account was $150 (£120) in the red.
GoHenry’s own website touts its "no overdraft facility" and the company reinforces what this mum says in her videos - that going into a negative balance isn’t possible on these cards.
According to their website, Jennifer’s kids shouldn’t have been able to spend money that she had not already pre-loaded to the card.
Responding to Jennifer's plight, other TikTok users shared their ire.
“Are they saying that $$ was erroneously added to the cards, and was spent, and the negative balance is because they just took that $$ back?” one person wrote.
“So they are expecting you to pay for their error… ugh,” read another comment.
A GoHenry spokesperson said: "We’re very sorry for the inconvenience and upset caused to Jennifer and her children. Due to an isolated issue with our third-party payment processor, a small percentage of successful purchases made by some of our US customers were refunded by our payment processor in error. A number of days later, the original transactions were then processed which, in some cases, resulted in a negative account balance.
"The safety of our customers’ money is our highest priority and we are working with our payment processor to return affected customer accounts to a positive balance as soon as possible.”
