A New Web Site for Junior Shopaholics

A San Francisco upstart plans to offer a way for online retailers to tap the multibillion-dollar youth market while giving parents a tool to teach their children money management skills.

Online retailers, particularly those in the music and clothing categories, have been trying to figure out how to tap the market of teenagers who lack the key to Internet shopping: a credit card.

ICanBuy.com hopes to get a slice of the $130 billion that children ages 4 to 18 spend annually, by launching a Web site where parents can open debit accounts with transfers from credit cards, which their children can then spend at affiliated merchants. Parents can set up either one-time transfers or automatic ones to the account, like a weekly spending allowance, and they can require parental approval for purchases over a certain threshold.

Along with a dozen retailers, the company has signed up with Security First Network Bank, an online-only bank, to offer teens interest-bearing savings accounts. The site goes live March 1.