Wealthsimple’s Kids and Teens Accounts Look Close to Launching. Here’s What We Know.

Back in May, Wealthsimple teased that kids and teens accounts were on the way as part of a bigger push into family banking. Now it looks like launch is getting close, since a full help centre article on how the accounts work has quietly gone live. Here’s everything in it.

What it actually is and who can get one?

A Kids and Teens Account is set up as a bare trust. That means you, the parent, are the legal account holder and trustee with full authority over the account, while your child is the beneficial owner of whatever money is in there. Account statements and tax documents (T5s) get issued as “[Your Name] ITF [Child’s Name].”

Your child gets a prepaid Visa card and a simplified version of the app for everyday spending, while you keep control over spending limits, category restrictions, and get real-time notifications on what they’re doing with it.

For now, these accounts are app-only. There’s no way to open or manage one on the web.

To open one, you need to already be a Wealthsimple client with an open chequing account and have completed identity verification. The account is opened for a child who hasn’t hit the age of majority in their province yet (so either 18 or 19, depending on where you live).

You can link up to 10 Kids and Teens Accounts to your profile, but each one can only have one parent or guardian attached to it for now. Wealthsimple says support for a second parent is coming in a future update.

One caveat: these accounts aren’t available in Quebec yet.

How it works day to day

When you set it up, you create your child’s Wealthsimple identity yourself, their name, date of birth, email, and password. Your child doesn’t need to go through any ID verification themselves.

Once it’s open, your kid can log in on their own device (or yours, if they don’t have one) and see their balance, transaction history, and card details. They can freeze their own card, check or change their PIN, and request money from you. What they can’t do is receive money from anyone but you. No e-transfers, no peer-to-peer transfers, nothing from grandma or aunts Patty and Selma directly.

On your end, you can send one-time transfers, set up a recurring allowance, approve or decline money requests, and manage every parental control from your phone. If your kid doesn’t have their own device, you can set a passcode that locks the app to their account view, so they’re not poking around in your actual Wealthsimple account.

The parental controls and how to fund it

You get a decent amount of control here:

• Lock or unlock the card anytime (if your kid locks it, only you can unlock it)
• Set spend limits by transaction, day, week, or month
• Restrict in-person purchases, online purchases, or ATM withdrawals
• Block gaming and in-app purchases specifically (sorry kiddos)
• Allow or block international spending

If something gets declined because of one of these controls, you and your child both get notified. You can approve a one-time exception, though that temporarily overrides all your other limits while it’s active.

You can only fund the account by transferring money from your own Wealthsimple chequing account. No linked external bank accounts, no Interac e-Transfer. You can do a one-time transfer or set up a recurring allowance on whatever schedule you want, and your kid can request money through the app for you to approve or decline.

The card itself and the tax stuff

Every account comes with a Visa prepaid card. The virtual version shows up instantly when you open the account, with a physical card coming later. There are no FX fees, and ATM fees get reimbursed, which is great for travel and a way for your kids to spend without carrying cash. Also, there’s no cash back for these kid and teen accounts.

Apple Pay and Google Pay both work too, but with age restrictions: your kid needs to be 13 for Apple Pay, and 16 for Google Pay (16 and 17 year olds also need parental permission for that one).

Since you’re the legal trustee, any interest earned in the account counts as your income for tax purposes, not your kid’s. You’d only need to file a T5 if the account earns $50 or more in interest in a year, and Wealthsimple flags that you might also need to file a T3.

One more thing worth knowing–this isn’t a replacement for an RESP. It’s built for everyday spending, not education savings, though Wealthsimple says you can hold both account types at once.

What we still don’t know

Wealthsimple hasn’t said exactly when this rolls out, beyond the original “fall 2026” timeline from the May announcement. But a fully published help centre article walking through every feature, control, and FAQ is usually a pretty strong hint that a launch isn’t far off.

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