How Quiddo Works: Pocket Money Without a Debit Card

Most of the pocket money apps in Australia are built around a prepaid card in your kid’s hand. We did not want that. This is a plain walk through what Quiddo does instead, and why we built it the way we did.

The problem we were solving

We have four kids. Keeping track of who had what left from birthdays, and which kid had already blown their last five dollars, was turning into a weekly headache. We tried a spreadsheet. It lasted about a fortnight, because nobody has time to hunt down the right tab and fix broken formulas every week.

Every actively developed app we looked at wanted to issue each of our kids a debit card. With four kids, that meant four cards to lose, four sources of stress when the money could not be reached, and one more thing for us to manage. So we built the thing we actually wanted: a tracker, not a card.

The core idea: a virtual balance, split into buckets

Each kid has a virtual balance in Quiddo, and you hold the real money the whole time. You can split that balance into Buckets - Spending, Savings, a Gift Fund, whatever fits your family - so money is earmarked before it can be spent, and pocket money can flow into each bucket automatically on pay day. The balance goes up when they earn and down when they spend, and they can watch it on your phone or their own device. ASIC’s Moneysmart frames pocket money as practice at weighing up wants against needs and saving toward goals, and a balance they can see moving is what makes that practice land - for a five-year-old with one spending pot and for a teenager splitting money across several savings goals alike.

No bank account, no minimum age, no card fees.

Earning: tasks and weekly pocket money

Money reaches a child’s balance two ways.

• Weekly pocket money, paid automatically. Set a day and an amount once, and Quiddo drops it into each kid’s balance every week without you doing anything. For how much to set, see our pocket money by age guide.
• Paid tasks. Attach a dollar value to a job. The child marks it done, it lands in your approval queue, you give it the tick, and their balance goes up straight away.

Responsibilities that hold the pocket money

Not every job should pay. The everyday ones, making the bed, feeding the cat, are simply expected. In Quiddo those are responsibilities, and they work differently from paid tasks: the weekly pocket money is held until enough of them are ticked off and approved. You set the threshold, or release a percentage based on how many got done. It puts the “helping out is just part of being in this family” lesson into how the money actually behaves. We wrote more about that split in our chores guide.

Saving toward something real

Each child can set a savings goal with a target amount and a photo of the thing they are saving for, and Quiddo shows how much is in and how much is left. Switch on auto-fund and a share of every pocket money payment and task reward goes straight into their goals before it can be spent, spread across several goals if they have more than one. When a goal is fully funded, the kid marks it reached themselves. Our saving guide covers the habits this is built to support.

Spending: you pay, they learn

When a child wants to buy something, they have saved the balance for it, so you pay on your own card and log it as a spend. Their balance drops. No cash changes hands and no card sits in a child’s pocket waiting to be lost. If you want the fuller case for going card-free, and how it compares to the card apps that can run $60 to $120 a year once fees add up, see our comparison of the alternatives.

Built for how families actually work

• Unlimited kids, one price. One subscription covers the whole family, and one owner can run up to three separate family accounts.
• Both parents, and separated families. Add a partner or co-parent and you share the same balances and approval queues. Two households can contribute to the same kids.
• Kids’ devices are optional. Run it all from your phone, or set older kids up on their own devices to see their balances and tasks.
• Points or a custom currency. Run it in dollars, or in “coins” with a made-up name and symbol if that suits younger kids better. You can even use different currencies for different kids.
• Made in Australia, on iOS, Android and the web.

Privacy, and why it is card-free by design

Going card-free is not a missing feature, it is the point. We did not want our kids attached to a bank early, and we did not want to hand over more of their details than the service needs. Quiddo asks for as little as possible, encrypts your connection, and keeps sensitive items like two-factor codes encrypted at rest. You can read more about the family behind it on our who are we page.

What it costs

$1.99 a month, or $15 a year, for the whole family with unlimited kids, after a 14-day free trial. If the trial ends and you do not choose a plan, the account goes read-only. You keep access to everything you have entered and can export all of it at any time.

If that sounds like your household, join the waitlist and we will let you know when Quiddo is ready.