Pocket money in a cashless world: what children get, how it arrives, and why the handover age matters

How much children get

The curve has a similar shape in each source: it rises slowly through primary school and faster in the mid-teens. In the UK, Rooster's regular allowance roughly triples between six and seventeen, and total income including chores and other top-ups goes from £4.58 to over £22 a week Rooster Money 2026. Greenlight's US users pay $6.18 a week at five and $21.47 at seventeen Greenlight. Dutch pupils' median pocket money rises from €22 a month at twelve to €30 at sixteen, with the mean (€40 overall) pulled up by a minority on much more Nibud 2025. In Germany's AID:A survey the median is €5 a week at five and six, €15 at ten, €20 at twelve and €50 at seventeen; weekly payment dominates in primary school and monthly payment takes over around the tenth birthday, so the figures from ten onwards are amounts per payment, monthly for most children by eleven DJI 2025.

None of these is a target. The app figures describe families who have already chosen a card for their child; the German and Dutch medians sit well below their means; and in every survey a large share of children get nothing regular at all.

Who gets it

In the AID:A survey, 22% of German five-year-olds get pocket money, 76% of ten-year-olds and 93% of fifteen-year-olds DJI 2025. In the Netherlands, 93% of parents of 6–14-year-olds give it regularly, in Nibud's survey with Rabobank Nibud 2023, and 85% of 12–18-year-old pupils still receive it, falling to 70% at seventeen and eighteen Nibud 2025. In the UK, 71% of 7–17s receive regular money, 64% of 7–11s rising to 84% of 16–17s, counting earnings as well as pocket money MaPS 2022. In the US, 71% of parents say they give an allowance, but only 43% do so regularly Wells Fargo / Ipsos 2025.

The cash handover

Ask about the medium and the answer depends heavily on age. In the UK, 56% of 7–11-year-olds who get pocket money receive it only in cash, against 36% of 12–17-year-olds, and parents say 75% of 7–11s who pay for things themselves always or mostly use cash in shops, half of 12–15s and 27% of 16–17s MaPS 2022. Year by year, the Money and Pensions Service finds 68% of seven-year-olds receive their pocket money in cash but 46% of eleven-year-olds, and by seventeen only 28% are paid only in cash while 58% are paid digitally MaPS 2024. Dutch parents report the handover earlier: just over 70% of 6–7-year-olds still get cash, but among 8–9-year-olds the cash-only share fell from 77% in 2018 to 49% in 2023 Nibud 2023; in secondary school 97% of Dutch pupils have their own debit card and only 17% use cash often Nibud 2025. American parents, asked which methods they use with several allowed, name cash most often: 73% give the allowance in cash, 80% for 5–8-year-olds and 62% for 15–17s, with payment apps used by 24% Wells Fargo / Ipsos 2025.

Eleven is also, in most of these countries, the move to secondary school. Separately, PISA finds that 15-year-olds who can decide what to spend their own money on score about 30 points higher in its financial-literacy test after allowing for gender, family wealth and immigrant background, the largest of the home associations the previous article in this series covered OECD 2024. The medium changes in the years when the decisions begin.

The adult economy is going first

Children are not driving this; they are following it. In the UK, cash was 62% of all payments in 2006 UK Finance 2022, 12% in 2023 UK Finance 2024 and 8% in 2025, and UK Finance expects 4% by 2035 UK Finance 2026. In the euro area, cash was used for 79% of in-store payments by number in 2016 and 52% in 2024, from 22% in the Netherlands to 67% in Malta ECB 2024. Norway went from 11% of in-store payments in 2017 to 2% in 2025 Norges Bank, and in Sweden the share paying cash for their last in-store purchase fell from 40% fifteen years ago to 5% in 2025 Riksbank 2026. A child in Oslo rarely sees an adult hand over a note; a child in Istanbul nearly always does, which is why the Turkish section below is about cash rather than cards.

Where a 15-year-old's money comes from

By fifteen, pocket money is one source among several. Across the OECD countries in PISA 2022, 86% of students had received money as a gift from friends or relatives in the past year, 66% an allowance without chores, 50% an allowance for regular chores, 44% had earned money working outside school hours and 41% by selling things OECD 2024. About six in ten held a bank account (63%) or a payment card (62%), 86% had bought something online and 66% had paid with a phone. National shares range widely: over 80% hold an account or card in the Flemish Community of Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, against 37% and 29% in Italy according to its national report, with Peru among the least likely. Holding an account, buying online and receiving gifts were each associated with higher financial-literacy scores after accounting for student characteristics; the OECD is careful to call these associations, and so are we.

Does any of it teach anything?

This is where the honest answer is shorter than parents would like. Dutch adults who received pocket money as children are more likely to save now (84% against 72%) and to hold a savings account (83% against 68%), and those links hold after allowing for whether their parents taught them to handle money, while a raw gap in payment arrears (34% against 43%) disappears once income, age, education and household type are allowed for Nibud 2016. In the Dutch household panel used by Bucciol and Veronesi, pocket money on its own is not significantly linked to saving in adulthood; it is pocket money combined with advice and the freedom to spend it that shows the strongest association, as the previous article set out Bucciol & Veronesi 2014. On this evidence, pocket money looks like raw material for decisions rather than a lesson in itself.

On cash versus digital, we found no study showing that either is better for learning. What exists is a plausible worry, that money a child never sees or counts is harder to feel, and an evidence gap: the Money and Pensions Service's 2023 review concludes that "given the widespread adoption of pocket money apps, evidence of the effectiveness of these remains lacking", and that where digital learning has been tested on behaviour "there was no meaningful impact detected" MaPS 2023 review. That includes Earnwick: we know of no published trial of any pocket-money card or app.

Türkiye: cash at home, cards in the pocket

Türkiye is the market in this series where cash dominates most completely. In the central bank's 2020 payment diary, 89.5% of in-store purchases by count and 76.0% by value were cash, against about 73% and 48% in the euro area as the Turkish authors cited the ECB's 2019 survey, and 32.3% of respondents received their entire income in cash TCMB 2021. The card infrastructure has nevertheless raced ahead: by July 2026 there were 476.2 million cards in issue, four in five in-store card payments were contactless and 30% of card spending was online BKM 2026. Hayat Finans launched Biz Kart, usable from age eight, in January 2026 Hayat Finans 2026.

What Türkiye lacks is data. We found no representative survey of pocket money by age and no official statistic on children's cards, and the "harçlık by age" tables that circulate in Turkish media are not survey results. The only figures we found come from an Ipsos survey for the bank Hayat Finans of about 146 parents in three cities, described in the write-up as non-representative, in which 52% give weekly pocket money and 88% give it in cash Hayat Finans 2026. Until a national survey asks, the honest statement is that Turkish children almost certainly handle more cash than their European peers, and nobody has measured by how much.