How can I buy an Xbox LIVE Gold membership for someone else?

We would like to give our son an XBox LIVE Gold membership. He and I both have free (silver) accounts on Xbox LIVE. Options I have found so far include:

• Attach our Visa card to our son's account
• Go out and buy a prepaid card
• Buy an XBL Gold Family Pack (an expensive solution since only one person will ever use it)

I would like to attach our Visa card to only my account and be able to give our son a Gold membership as a gift. I am convinced this is possible but I fail to find a relevant link to do so.

Additional note: I would like to purchase this from my home computer. Typing with the controller has proven to be a frustrating experience.

Solution 1:

I would suggest buying your son a prepaid card. You do have to remember when it runs out and buy another, but they tend to be $10-15 cheaper than buying the same amount of time through Microsoft directly. It's also much easier to stop being a subscriber, since you just don't add more time to the account - no need to figure out how to stop the automatic payments.

Solution 2:

There is an Xbox Live Family Gold pack subscription, where you can transfer points to secondary accounts. The credit card is only attached to the primary account. This is not exactly what you want, but maybe an interesting alternative.

I don't own an Xbox, so I don't have any personal experience with that.

Solution 3:

There is a bundle I once got (would link it but I'm at work) at futureshop that included a year of live (not 13 months), a headset, chat pad and some random game. It is definitely worth looking into to because the headsets always seem to break.