The new tool, which is available to users in Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Italy, works simply and quickly, and is also free.
The financial application PayPal has introduced a new shared fund function aimed at making it easier to manage funds between groups of friends, acquaintances, family, etc. An organizer will have the ability to spend or save those funds, while members will be able to invite others to join via text messages, email or WhatsApp, without the other person needing to have a PayPal account.
The possible use cases for this tool are those shared investments that are made on a trip, on a birthday gift, for a meal or a party, etc.
Contributions to this kind of shared piggy bank can be made using a PayPal balance or, if you do not have funds on the platform or did not have a PayPal account, with a bank account. Organizers can set a fund name, description, deadline, and funding goal.
Users can access this feature by selecting “Money Fund” from the PayPal app menu or from the “More Options” menu within the “Send/Request” tab.
With the introduction of this new tool, PayPal would be seeking to get users to make the platform known to other people through the use of this new function, however, the platform faces other apps that have already become quite popular due to offer those same conveniences when keeping track of payments between several people. Settle Up, for example, is a well-known app among roommates to half-pay common expenses.
A great utility
Of course, PayPal’s shared fund can be more useful than Bizum in these cases, since it would save the need to do so many mental calculations to pay each person’s share. Instead, the PayPal tool, like others such as Settle Up or Venmo, would make it easier to view each person’s contributions, automatically indicating what amounts some participants owe to others.
Although, on the other hand, funds would mainly be moved between PayPal accounts, so users who do not actively use this platform could find it annoying to have to make transfers to their other bank later.
These tools make settling accounts much easier, and prevent those clueless friends from forgetting to return the money they owe us, by being duly registered in the app.
