iTunes-AllowanceDid you use Apple’s “iTunes Allowances” feature to give your kids a specific amount of money per month to buy iTunes media, such as music, apps, or e-books from the iBooks store? No more. Apple has announced it’s sunsetting the program. It’s already disabled the ability to create new allowances, and existing allowances will stop as of May 25.

Apple suggests families who used the program should use Family Sharing instead, which allows up to six family members to share iTunes, iBooks, and App Store purchases, or use iTunes Gifts to send gifts to other people.

I hadn’t been aware that such a feature existed, but I’m not sure why it was even necessary. If you’re looking to give your kid an allowance, there are better ways  For example, Mastercard offers a rechargeable prepaid debit card that you can load more money onto at need. Kids could use that for buying pretty much anything anywhere that takes a credit card, not just from iTunes.

Perhaps Apple shut the program down because it just wasn’t getting enough people using it to be worth the administrative costs?

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