PRESS RELEASE
Many children turn to video games as one of the many ways to have fun and play with friends remotely. Now, Xbox is helping parents better track and manage their kids’ spending while they play.
This month, Xbox released several new updates to the Xbox Family Settings app, available for free on iOS and Android, to make it even easier for parents to oversee their children’s purchases right from their phone. Here are some of the new features.
Add funds and approve purchases directly in the app
Parents can now add money to their children’s account directly from the Family Settings app, and approve purchases for games, and in-game content like skins, and apps.
This feature is a great way for parents who want to reward kids for good behaviour, or set a weekly allowance.
The ‘Ask to Buy’ feature
Parents can turn this feature ‘on’ to receive a notification each time their child wants to make a purchase that they don’t have sufficient funds for. Parents can then add money to their account for an in-game purchase. And if parents don’t want to approve the purchase, they can simply select the “deny” button.
View account balances
At any time, parents can review their child’s account balance and decide if they’d like to add additional funds to their account.
Spending history
Parents can also view their child’s spending history to keep track of their recent purchases.
The full list of new features and additional information can be found here.
These new features add to the already robust Xbox Family Settings app, which empowers parents to create child accounts, update screen time limits, respond to notifications, ability to approve multiplayer access, manage who their children can play and communicate with and much more – all from their phone.