UPDATE: BillMyParents wanted to clarify the partnerships the company has forged: “The company did launch with partnerships with Artix Entertainment, Habbo, Outspark and RockYou! to integrate the BillMyParents payment system into their online games, virtual and social networks.”
Can’t get enough buy-me-this begging from your kids at the supermarket/mall/anywhere? How about signing up for kid spam? In the 21st century, this may be how familial begging is conducted, but it may not need any help.
BillMyParents from Socialwise launched today (again—looks like there’ve been a couple of other soft launches), a “youth payment system” that helps kids shop online and get approval from their parents.
The concept is fairly simple and intuitive: kids see stuff they want online, they add the stuff to their BillMyParents shopping cart. The parents view the cart, approve or deny the purchases, final bill is sent to parents’ credit card with a 50-cent transaction fee for BillMyParents.
Today’s re-launch press release notes that out of the $132 billion spent by youth each year, about $40 billion of it is stuff researched online and bought offline. Forty percent of the teens surveyed said they don’t shop online because they don’t have a credit card.
BillMyParents aims to solve that by giving kids better access to their parents’ credit cards. CNet reports there are debit-card like allowance accounts on the way as well. CNet also notes that this apparently third attempt to launch (December, March, and now May) comes without any major partners, which is interesting.
On the surface it sounds like an ingenious idea, one that any online vendor should jump on—so why the apparent difficulty in forging partnerships? It may be the attraction of the product would have to be heavily promoted so as to mask the real necessity of the product. In other words, BillMyParents would have to invent some necessity or make consumers/vendors believe they need it more than they actually do.
BillMyParents aims to be on social networks and vendor sites, but it may be that nobody really needs it. Here’s why:
- Unless patented, eBay, Amazon, Facebook, you name it, could offer something this simple. A wishlist, a parental shopping cart, any variation allowing the same type of luxury and this service is toast.
- Why pay 50 cents per shopping event, or go through a central location, when kids can accomplish the same thing with email or SMS: Dad, I need new shoes. these [link]. $100 Ok?
- Wal-Mart and Visa solved the no credit card problem with cash cards people can use as credit cards. They work online, too.
But you never know. Maybe the world needs a new “youth payment system” and maybe BillMyParents is at the forefront.
