What to think of allowing your child the freedom of online shopping without having to hand over your credit card? BillMyParents makes it possible for children to shop without actually giving them access to your credit card number, and allowing you to accept or decline every purchase.

How does BillMyParents work? A child selects the products it wants to buy at one of the online retailers that are connected to the BillMyParents network. A notification is then sent to the parent, after which they can approve the purchase and pay for it using their credit card.

This way, the parents can control which purchases are made, how much money is spent and even how many purchase requests are made.

50 cent
BillMyParents claims it’s a safe, secure way of letting children shop online. A spokesman of the company says the little user will never accidentally expose the credit card information to others or to questionable merchants because they will never have access to it. “We give merchants only enough information to ship the order, so your information remains safe and confidential”. Users of BillMyParents are charged a 50 cent fee per transaction. There are no sign up or account maintenance fees.

Wish lists…
Although it’s certainly an interesting service, the question is whether it’s worth the 50 cent transaction fee. After all, the child can also turn directly to their parents and ask them if they can buy that one particular DVD at Amazon. What happened to old-fashioned wish lists? On the other hand, the service saves parents the hassle of going through the ordering process. So what do you think?