I can’t decide if I think this is cool or not. BillMyParents is a new service that allows children to shop online and then select this service as a payment option. Mom or Dad then gets an email and the option to approve or decline individual purchases, all without the hassle of going to the actual vendor site or placing a new order. It’s kind of like a parental line item veto.

On the one hand, this does acclimate children to the idea of shopping for themselves without the inherent risk of giving them direct access to your money. On the other hand, I suppose this could look like a bottomless wish list to some children.

I have a suspicion that it ultimately won’t prove terribly useful. While I like the idea, the reality seems to be that kids/parents come in a couple of flavors. On the one hand are the families where the kids seem to get pretty much whatever they want anyway. This model doesn’t change that much, and many of those kids already have their own charge cards on Mom & Dad’s account. At the other end, there are kids who just aren’t into the whole shopping scene. Mom & Dad struggle at holidays to even get them to declare a want or need. These kids aren’t going to be more inclined to shop as a result of this new service.

While I’m certain there are some kids/parents who fall in the grey area, I’m not sure there’s enough of them to warrant this as a business model. Further, it seems that if PayPal or even one of the credit card companies did find this to be a useful model, they could implement it more easily and push BillMyParents to the periphery pretty quickly.

I guess of our four kids, I could maybe see one of them using this. But I’m not sure it would add too much value to the shopping process. But then I’m rather shopping hostile myself, so perhaps I’m a poor judge.