BillMyParents raises $4.86 million in equity funding to help teenagers spend money responsibly

BillMyParents, a company that promotes responsible teen spending through a prepaid SpendSmart MasterCard, has announced today that it has raised net proceeds of $4.86 million, following a deduction of fees and expenses which came to just under $622,000.

Mike McCoy, CEO and chairman of BillMyParents, said the company will be using the money “to fund further development and growth” moving forward in 2013.

BillMyParents has issued 13,719,975 shares of common stock, priced at $0.40 per share, to a number of private investors as part of the move. Due to the terms associated with these shares, BillMyParents has also given out five year warrants that will allow owners to purchase up to 8,125,000 additional shares at an exercise price of $0.50 per share, as well as an extra 1,398,744 priced at $0.60 per share.

BillMyParents is a solution for parents who want to try to help their young ones spend money more intelligently. It uses a SpendSmart MasterCard card, which is an instantly trackable and reloadable prepaid card that allows parents to see what they’re spending in real-time.

It has a number of notable features for concerned mothers and fathers, such as the ability to instantly lock, unlock and reload the prepaid card at any time, as well as text alerts so that both parents and teenagers can see what they’ve just spend.

Given that BillMyParents uses a prepaid card, it’s also virtually impossible for the teenager to spend more than what the parent has chosen to load onto the card, meaning that there’s no risk of them quickly gaining a stack of debt, opening overdrafts or negatively affecting their credit scores.

The company, which announced last November that Justin Bieber would soon be one of their brand ambassadors,  also has apps for both iOS and Android devices to keep track of purchases and total balances in real-time.

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