PayPal announced a new feature that they hope will help people deal with the stress of the holiday shopping season. According to PayPal, 54% of people who responded to a recent poll say they are stressed out by the prospect of holiday shopping and only 32% find it a joyful experience. To help with that, PayPal added a new Money Pools feature to their platform to make it a little easier to collect money from family and friends for gifts given by a group of people.
The new Money Pools is available through your PayPal account. When setting up a new pool, users will be walked through the process of identifying the gift, who it is for, the dollar amount of the group goal and when funds will be needed. Users can also do things like adding a custom cover photo and toggling whether contributions from pool members will be publicly viewable by others in the group. The pool can then be shared with others via text, e-mail, Facebook or Twitter.
When it comes to who people plan to spend their money on, PayPal found friends, family members, significant others, and pets were at the top of the list. Surprisingly, those responding to the survey indicated they plan to spend more on their pets during the holiday season that they will spend on their friends.
If you are into comparing different generations, PayPal discovered Millennials plan to spend the most on their children while all other groups will spend the most on their significant others. The Millenial group is also expected to spend an average of $657 on gifts this year. All of this spending is expected to yield a $630 Billion shopping season during the holidays.
PayPal also discovered that a whopping 80% of those surveyed planned to shop from their mobile phones this year. Using a smartphone gives shoppers more flexibility to shop from wherever they are or when inspiration strikes. Sadly, one area expected to see a rise in shopping is the dinner table where 22% of people expect to make a purchase, up from 14% last year. All of this interest in shopping from our phones does lead to some frustration though and large numbers of people are turned off by retailers who fail to optimize their shopping sites for mobile devices. Users also get frustrated with having to repeatedly enter their personal and payment information.
Are you ready for the holiday shopping season?
