You can personalize each money pool by setting a goal and a deadline, as well as typing in a description of what gift you're buying or what you're collecting money for. If you want to spruce it up even more, you can add a cover photo. And depending on what it's for, you can choose to make contributor names public or to keep them private.

You can access the feature by going to "Your Pools" on desktop or mobile. Once you're done setting one up, you can send your friends not-so-subtle reminders with a link to it via text, e-mail, Facebook or Twitter, which could save you the trouble of having to repeatedly ask them for their part. To be 100 percent sure, though, you can always check who's already chipped in through the pool's activity feed.

Most of the respondents in the company's holiday survey said they plan to shop from their mobile devices, and PayPal is likely hoping you'll use Money Pools if you go the phone shopping route. If you were going to use PayPal anyway, then it wouldn't hurt having easy access to friends' contributions to make sure you don't go overbudget or spend your own money when you don't need to.