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PayPal data reveals unpaid requests between music’s biggest fan bases, leaves UK music fans over £360,000 out of pocket.

LONDON, February 7, 2025 – From dinner tabs to gig tickets, the wait to get paid back by friends and family is all too familiar. Delving into this phenomenon, and as UK music fans gear up for more major tours and concerts in 2025, PayPal reveals the scale of 2024 concert personal debts between friends and family, estimating thousands of music fans are still waiting to be paid back for some of the top music events in 2024.

After analysing over 17 million money transfers and requests between friends and family¹, PayPal identified over £7 million worth of friends and family money transfers sent over the last 12 months tied to 20 top touring artists, including Taylor Swift, Oasis, Adele and Billie Eilish. However, PayPal also uncovered that over £360,000 worth of payback requests have been ‘left on read’. PayPal found:

• Taylor Swift fans top the charts for the most money transferred among friends and family, totalling an impressive £2.2 million.
• Oasis fans sent the highest average amount, at £330 per transfer.
• Oasis, Take That and Taylor Swift fans have the highest number of unpaid requests, with over £250,000 owed.
• Ed Sheeran fans have the least number of unpaid requests.

Enter ‘the Mate Wait’ – a term coined by financial expert and author Alex Holder, to describe the undetermined amount of time a person spends waiting to be reimbursed by a friend or loved one for shared expenses. Alex comments: “In a time when you can settle up in seconds on your phone, it’s incredibly interesting that the data shows us that so many people are still out of pocket from events they went to last year. I think us Brits in particular have a funny dynamic of paying back friends and family which reveals a lot about our relationships.

Some are hesitant to nudge their mates and will re-write that message a hundred times before pressing send, while others put the payment to the back of their mind, thinking they’ll get to it at a more convenient time, but then completely forget. With platforms like PayPal simplifying the process, there’s no reason to leave your mates waiting.”

Ending ‘the Mate Wait’ with PayPal

To help alleviate the “the Mate Wait” and make it easy to split costs, PayPal introduced a new pool money² feature, which offers a streamlined way to collect money for concert tickets, group gifts, and other shared expenses. Free to create and easy to use, Pool allows customers to:

• Set up a pool via the PayPal app or online.
• Invite friends and family to contribute and view funds whether they have a PayPal account or not.
• The pool organiser can transfer funds directly to their PayPal balance to spend or withdraw to their bank account.

The feature is available now to customers in the UK, US, Germany, Italy, and Spain. More information on how to use PayPal Pool can be found here.

With a lineup of 2025 concerts including Oasis, Sabrina Carpenter, and Coldplay, now is the perfect time to ensure that debts are paid, and group plans go off without a hitch.

¹ Methodology: PayPal analysed peer-to-peer transactions with terminology associated to top music events in the UK, Germany and Italy (e.g. “Swift”) from January to October 2024. PayPal has no commercial partnership with the artists or music events analysed.
² An account with PayPal is required to create a Pool. Fees apply when converting currency and sending money to an account in another country. See fees here. Terms and limitations apply.

About PayPal
PayPal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years. Creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalised, and secure, PayPal empowers consumers and businesses in approximately 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy. For more information, visit https://www.paypal.com, https://about.pypl.com/ and https://investor.pypl.com/.