• Chipin is a new ecommerce platform that lets you crowdfund your gifts.
• Users can create and share wishlists with others who can in turn “chip in” toward the cost of the gift.
• Right now the offering is rather limited and the website is incredibly slow.

There is a new ecommerce platform in South Africa which hopes to make getting the gifts you want easier.

The platform is Chipin and as the name implies, it allows folks to chip in for the cost of a gift. Whether you want a new gas range cooker or an Xbox Series S, Chipin lets you create a list and then share that list with friends and family where they can contribute to the cost.

“We wanted to create a platform that makes gift-giving fun and easy,” says Chipin founder, Rob Anderson. “We know how stressful it can be to find the perfect gift, and we wanted to take the pressure off. With Chipin, you can come together as a group and give a gift that your loved one will really appreciate, like an iPhone or an Xbox.”

Taking a quick look through the platform the first thing we noticed is that the website is incredibly slow. The products on offer are also rather limited. For example, we searched for an NVIDIA RTX 4090 but were unable to find the GPU in Chipin’s catalogue.

So why use Chipin then? Well for one you can now have friends and family – as well as strangers – donate to the cost of something you want directly. From what we can tell, the funds will remain in your account until you want to make a payment.

Weirdly, however, donations can only be made up to the value of the item. While testing, we noted that there was an additional delivery fee of R80, but we could only “chipin” up to the cost of the item. This is despite saying that the list included a delivery fee.

Of course, you could simply share your online shopping wishlist with your friends and family but we suppose that Chipin offers something unique.

With that having been said, Chipin is a rather new service and we would advise that if you want to try use it that you do so with smaller purchases before you dive in an try to garner thousands for the aforementioned gas range oven.