making an apple id without adding a payment method

If you already made it with a card, you can still take it off afterwards: Settings > your name > Payment & Shipping, remove it and None appears. It won't let you if there's an active subscription or an unpaid balance, so clear those first.

The old trick still works: sign out of the App Store, find any free app and tap Get. When it asks you to sign in, choose to create a new Apple ID from that prompt. Going in that way, the payment screen shows a None option. If None isn't there at all, it's usually one of two things. Either the account is set up as part of Family Sharing (the organiser has to have a card on file), or the country or region you picked doesn't offer it. A kid's account created through Family Sharing doesn't need its own card anyway.