I love that they're trying this, and it seems to be executed well.
My friends and I already use Venmo for bill splitting though, and it works pretty well.
Generally I subscribe to the school of thought that each app should do one thing and do it well, and this is sort of unfortunately getting away from that.
Maybe I'm just not as social as other people, but bill splitting and chipping in has never been a problem for me. Ever. On a handful of occasions I've had someone in a group I was in say they were strapped, and I've covered their portion of something. Others have done the same for me. Someone buys lunch for me if I have no cash, I get their lunch next week.
Buying a gift in an office for someone? Well, I've not worked in an office for a while, but cash used to work well (and didn't leave a digital trail of who you're giving money to).
Maybe there's some bigger play going on in this market, but it's always felt to me like a solution looking for a problem.
EDIT - on the few occasions where I've 'split a bill' with someone out at a bar/club/restaurant, I always feel I get stiffed, because I don't drink alcohol - so getting a $100 bill split 5 ways... well... I just had a $3 pepsi - why the hell do we "split" this equally?
I don't think anyone has an issue with actually having the money to contribute to the bill. And if everyone is paying by card it's pretty simple, but once you get cash involved giving everyone the right change can be a huge pain. I've had a lot of success using Venmo for this purpose.
You guys are probably right about the value of this app in a restaurant especially vs. cash or asking servers to split the bill---
however, I think there's a less obvious value for this tool in offices, for example, where people split gifts or cakes or lottery ante-ups together... not everyone might be physically in the office on a given particular day, etc...
I feel that. We can be old geezers together. We've had a solution to this "problem" for centuries: cash.
If your group is too lazy to ask the server to split the tab 4 ways, what in the world makes you think they're all going to pull out their apps and pay this way? Then there's inevitably someone who doesn't have a smartphone, or doesn't have that app, or doesn't want to sign up for a new payment account, or doesn't like using credit cards online, or whatever.
More than a couple times I've been sitting there with people trying to add up their totals, some taking out cash, some taking out cards, arguing over who pays what, and just paid the whole thing and asked them to buy me coffee or a meal or whatever when they can.
Not only that but it's like Nero is fiddling while Rome burns. North Korea is building up an arsenal to strike the US. And our best and brightest are solving big problems like this.
The best and brightest are working as US diplomats, or are doing intelligence gathering on NK's capabilities, or are maintaining our nuclear arsenal. It's only within the HN, Silicon Valley echo chamber that the "best and brightest" are working on social networks for cats.
With restaurant bills, things get rather complicated when everyone orders different items, someone bought a Groupon, etc. Unless people are OK with over/under paying, a bill splitting app can be pretty useful to figure out what everyone actually owes.
Cash works well when everyone has it, but from what I've seen that doesn't happen all that often. Also, you get a lot of restaurants that refuse to itemize the bill (maybe their point of sale system doesn't support it), and sometimes they'll only take 1 credit card. Integration with payment apps is great for that. It goes beyond saving time...an app can help make sure people pay up and the IOUs don't become permanent.
Usually, there's a minimum charge ('gratuity') for parties of 6 or 8 or more, so they better damn well split the bills for us. I've had it be a problem twice in the past 6 years of dining out, and once was sort of my own doing (we had a party of 24 on a Friday night - I just paid it as a single thing vs having everyone split it up - it was an unusual event). The other time it happened was a party of 5 and the server refused to split up the bill. We all chipped in something, but I don't go back there anymore.
Maybe it's a bigger problem in some areas of the world, but not mine.
I've used it very successfully for vacation and for a whiskey fund for the office. Usually more expensive charges or ones that include a lot of people.
I have not used it to split dinner or a bar tab. That's cash.
It is actually a very widely used application for people living with roommates or other non-institutionalized housing arrangements where groceries and other monthly expenses are split on a regular basis -- college folk, young entrepreneurs, cash strapped people etc.
I believe it is a pretty rife market -- rentshare.com, splitwise.com, billmonk, reconcileapp.com etc.
Bill split apps are really nice if you live in a shared housing/dorm type situation. At our hacker house, we're always going out for dinner together, or sending someone out to get food, or ordering groceries on Instacart - saves so much time not having to use cash, or keep track of who got what beforehand. Really wish this was an option while I was in college.
We've been using Split&Pay ( https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/splitandpay/id593386557 ) - payment is really smooth (just click the button in the e-mail and you're done), particularly since we all already have WePay accounts, since that's how we organize our rent payments.
Full disclosure: Author of the app is one of my housemates, and founding engineer of WePay.
I don't really have a use for the split myself. But I definitely understand that it could be easier than cash.
I never have cash. Ever. My paycheck is direct deposit. Almost everywhere I got accepts debit cards - even vending machines and meters. I occasionally get money out for a farmer's market or similar event, but it's always for something specific and very much the exception to my spending habits.
Yeah, really. For one, no one in the house carries cash, and no one wants to - that was even more true in college when a lot was paid for via campus ID. Not everyone has transportation to an ATM, either.
More importantly though, when people are splitting bills more than twice a week (often with different subsets of the group), getting paid back isn't just a pain, it gets to be a source of tension in the house - really quickly no one wants to split bills, because no one wants to have to harass their friends about money.
With the bill split app, the person who pays racks up reward points on their credit card, and all they have to do is type in how much everyone owes, and that's the end of it. Everyone else clicks a button and they're paid up.
> Not everyone has transportation to an ATM, either.
Do they go grocery shopping? Get cash back when paying with debit. It's free and handy.
> no one wants to have to harass their friends about money.
Sounds like more of a personality issue... clearly they have the means to pay if clicking a button works. Back in the dark ages my roommates and I just kept a running tally of who owes what on the whiteboard. Kinda nice because you can use those amounts as "accounts" -- I owe you $20 for internet, but 4 days later you owe me $20 for dinner, so we're square. No need for a transaction at all. We'd settle up, if need be, at the end of the month by writing checks. These days you don't even have to go to the bank to deposit them.
> With the bill split app, the person who pays racks up reward points on their credit card
Not sure why you're so insistent this is a non-problem (to the point of implying that I or my housemates have personality issues, much less) - it's not like we haven't tried cash. It sucked, so my housemate made an app, and it's awesome.
> Do they go grocery shopping?
Not really - in college most people relied on the meal plan. At the house, we make heavy use of Amazon and Instacart. Those who do shop still don't enjoy having to remember to get cash and make change.
> Sounds like a personality issue
People forget, or just forget to grab cash, because it's not something they normally do, and no one enjoys playing debt collector. WePay can hold balances, too, so the app is basically just a more convenient version of the whiteboard, but with the extra feature of saving a trip to the ATM.
If obtaining cash was somehow related to a personality issue, but that person was otherwise a good housemate, it'd be worth it to throw some technology at the problem and make it a non-issue.
> checks
People are more likely to have a computer, so there's no need to add paper and OCR into the mix when there are better options.
> and then pays 4%
Only if the retailer is passing the transaction fee onto the customer, in which case they can pay with some other method.
People paying debts can link a bank account, so their transaction fee is maybe 50 cents.
That's the personality issue I was referring to. I can see the infomercial now... "Is asking the person you share sleeping quarters with for the $5 he owes you causing hernias and cold sweats? Is retrieving a $10 bill and handing it to a person you see during most of your waking hours just too much damn work? Do you think checks are for old people? Then listen up, 'cause we have the product for you!"
Snark aside, I'm probably just being short sighted. People said the same thing about early consumer digital cameras, too (1/16 the resolution of film, 5x more expensive, mega slow, one lens, and 5 pictures fills up my hard drive? Where do I sign up?!) and now it's ubiquitous.
I do think it's a real issue, but I think it's nuts that everyone encounters a 4% + 99¢ processing fee just to move money around among friends. Our payments system is in need of a serious update.
In simple terms, the value proposition is "not having to think about it". An app that adds functionality (ie, not-being-stupid about it) with practicality (not having to think about it) is sort of a classic win/win. The app that provides a bit of an audit trail, and allows for pre-negotiation, etc could even be tweaked over time to balance out even if simple stochastics dont do so by themselves.
Is it too hard to ask for separate checks or figure out Basic Dining 101? Call me an old fart, but when I read about apps like this I want to do my Samuel L. Jackson imitation and say; "Arithmetic, m-----f-----, can you figure it?"
This seems unreasonably expensive. Each contributor gets charged 4% plus $0.99. This makes it very expensive to split a restaurant lunch bill.
8 people chipping in on a $100 check:
Even split would be $12.50 per person.
With this service it would be $14.00 per person.
That's a 12% tax on lunch for everyone but the initiator.
This might be useful for bigger purchases, but even then, charging 4% to give money to my friend seems a little ridiculous.
I feel like check splitting is always a bigger problem for the restaurant/server than it is for the people paying. All the customers need to do is pull out a credit card. It's the server that actually has to split the bill and you can always see the discomfort on his/her face when you ask them to split it AFTER they give you the check. Just let them know before ordering that you'll be needing separate checks.
The example on the site seems like a better use case, but the marketing copy "split the bill" immediately makes me think of a restaurant or bar tab which I don't regard as a problem.
Doesn't work that way, the default method--by far--is one check. So they'd annoy and possibly offend, say, 98 people out of 100 when the 2 or so that are splitting the check can say so before ordering.
What's the problem that this is solving? Paying friends with credit cards isn't the way to go. Cash, if you don't have this week (it happens) I'll /you'll wait for a week or x weeks.
People hang with people with similar values so it's extremely rare for friends to screw friends and when that happens, it happens once.
One of the biggest lessons I've learned building matchist so far (http://matchist.com/talent) is that there is a delicate balance between when my opinion is king and when data is king.
In my opinion, GroupMe isn't solving a problem with this feature (for many of the reasons others have commented on here). But I'm assuming GroupMe has a good amount of data proving that this problem exists. I sure hope they do, because in this case, data should absolutely trump their opinion of whether or not this is a problem to be solved.
Bill sharing has been a hassle for me since I have two roommates, but I've been using Splitwise without any complaints. From the looks of it, this is taking the group SMS approach, which I would find overwhelming. I get e-mails whenever bills are added and that's good enough for me. Nice work on the UI, that was the first thing I noticed.
I eat in large groups often and we only split evenly on occasion. It almost always never happens. To charge per transaction makes this even less useful (to me in particular). I personally find something like Venmo much more practical where one person fronts the bill (and gets rewards/points) while the rest Venmo what they owe on the spot. It's never a fair even split.
"How much does it cost?
Per transaction, contributors will be charged 3.5% on whatever they chip in for a Credit Card Processing Fee. GroupMe charges a .99 convenience fee."
They also state that they are using Balanced Payments to process the payments, which charges 2.9% + 30c per payout (and additional 25c per deposit). I'm skeptical that users would even be willing to pay this rate...
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadMy friends and I already use Venmo for bill splitting though, and it works pretty well.
Generally I subscribe to the school of thought that each app should do one thing and do it well, and this is sort of unfortunately getting away from that.
Buying a gift in an office for someone? Well, I've not worked in an office for a while, but cash used to work well (and didn't leave a digital trail of who you're giving money to).
Maybe there's some bigger play going on in this market, but it's always felt to me like a solution looking for a problem.
EDIT - on the few occasions where I've 'split a bill' with someone out at a bar/club/restaurant, I always feel I get stiffed, because I don't drink alcohol - so getting a $100 bill split 5 ways... well... I just had a $3 pepsi - why the hell do we "split" this equally?
however, I think there's a less obvious value for this tool in offices, for example, where people split gifts or cakes or lottery ante-ups together... not everyone might be physically in the office on a given particular day, etc...
uh, edit: haven't looked into Venmo, doing so now
If your group is too lazy to ask the server to split the tab 4 ways, what in the world makes you think they're all going to pull out their apps and pay this way? Then there's inevitably someone who doesn't have a smartphone, or doesn't have that app, or doesn't want to sign up for a new payment account, or doesn't like using credit cards online, or whatever.
More than a couple times I've been sitting there with people trying to add up their totals, some taking out cash, some taking out cards, arguing over who pays what, and just paid the whole thing and asked them to buy me coffee or a meal or whatever when they can.
Not only that but it's like Nero is fiddling while Rome burns. North Korea is building up an arsenal to strike the US. And our best and brightest are solving big problems like this.
Cash works well when everyone has it, but from what I've seen that doesn't happen all that often. Also, you get a lot of restaurants that refuse to itemize the bill (maybe their point of sale system doesn't support it), and sometimes they'll only take 1 credit card. Integration with payment apps is great for that. It goes beyond saving time...an app can help make sure people pay up and the IOUs don't become permanent.
Disclosure: I recently released Grouptuity (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.grouptuity), which tries to solve these problems and integrates with Venmo.
Maybe it's a bigger problem in some areas of the world, but not mine.
I have not used it to split dinner or a bar tab. That's cash.
We've been using Split&Pay ( https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/splitandpay/id593386557 ) - payment is really smooth (just click the button in the e-mail and you're done), particularly since we all already have WePay accounts, since that's how we organize our rent payments.
Full disclosure: Author of the app is one of my housemates, and founding engineer of WePay.
...really?
I never have cash. Ever. My paycheck is direct deposit. Almost everywhere I got accepts debit cards - even vending machines and meters. I occasionally get money out for a farmer's market or similar event, but it's always for something specific and very much the exception to my spending habits.
More importantly though, when people are splitting bills more than twice a week (often with different subsets of the group), getting paid back isn't just a pain, it gets to be a source of tension in the house - really quickly no one wants to split bills, because no one wants to have to harass their friends about money.
With the bill split app, the person who pays racks up reward points on their credit card, and all they have to do is type in how much everyone owes, and that's the end of it. Everyone else clicks a button and they're paid up.
Do they go grocery shopping? Get cash back when paying with debit. It's free and handy.
> no one wants to have to harass their friends about money.
Sounds like more of a personality issue... clearly they have the means to pay if clicking a button works. Back in the dark ages my roommates and I just kept a running tally of who owes what on the whiteboard. Kinda nice because you can use those amounts as "accounts" -- I owe you $20 for internet, but 4 days later you owe me $20 for dinner, so we're square. No need for a transaction at all. We'd settle up, if need be, at the end of the month by writing checks. These days you don't even have to go to the bank to deposit them.
> With the bill split app, the person who pays racks up reward points on their credit card
...and then pays 4%. Worth it?
> Do they go grocery shopping?
Not really - in college most people relied on the meal plan. At the house, we make heavy use of Amazon and Instacart. Those who do shop still don't enjoy having to remember to get cash and make change.
> Sounds like a personality issue
People forget, or just forget to grab cash, because it's not something they normally do, and no one enjoys playing debt collector. WePay can hold balances, too, so the app is basically just a more convenient version of the whiteboard, but with the extra feature of saving a trip to the ATM.
If obtaining cash was somehow related to a personality issue, but that person was otherwise a good housemate, it'd be worth it to throw some technology at the problem and make it a non-issue.
> checks
People are more likely to have a computer, so there's no need to add paper and OCR into the mix when there are better options.
> and then pays 4%
Only if the retailer is passing the transaction fee onto the customer, in which case they can pay with some other method.
People paying debts can link a bank account, so their transaction fee is maybe 50 cents.
> no one enjoys playing debt collector.
That's the personality issue I was referring to. I can see the infomercial now... "Is asking the person you share sleeping quarters with for the $5 he owes you causing hernias and cold sweats? Is retrieving a $10 bill and handing it to a person you see during most of your waking hours just too much damn work? Do you think checks are for old people? Then listen up, 'cause we have the product for you!"
Snark aside, I'm probably just being short sighted. People said the same thing about early consumer digital cameras, too (1/16 the resolution of film, 5x more expensive, mega slow, one lens, and 5 pictures fills up my hard drive? Where do I sign up?!) and now it's ubiquitous.
I'm happy footing the bill if I can get payments from everyone else via credit card right at the spot.
Cash also works but more than likely everyone will have a credit card. If they don't, then cash.
Great work.
Is it too hard to ask for separate checks or figure out Basic Dining 101? Call me an old fart, but when I read about apps like this I want to do my Samuel L. Jackson imitation and say; "Arithmetic, m-----f-----, can you figure it?"
8 people chipping in on a $100 check: Even split would be $12.50 per person. With this service it would be $14.00 per person. That's a 12% tax on lunch for everyone but the initiator.
This might be useful for bigger purchases, but even then, charging 4% to give money to my friend seems a little ridiculous.
I feel like check splitting is always a bigger problem for the restaurant/server than it is for the people paying. All the customers need to do is pull out a credit card. It's the server that actually has to split the bill and you can always see the discomfort on his/her face when you ask them to split it AFTER they give you the check. Just let them know before ordering that you'll be needing separate checks.
The example on the site seems like a better use case, but the marketing copy "split the bill" immediately makes me think of a restaurant or bar tab which I don't regard as a problem.
People hang with people with similar values so it's extremely rare for friends to screw friends and when that happens, it happens once.
In my opinion, GroupMe isn't solving a problem with this feature (for many of the reasons others have commented on here). But I'm assuming GroupMe has a good amount of data proving that this problem exists. I sure hope they do, because in this case, data should absolutely trump their opinion of whether or not this is a problem to be solved.
They also state that they are using Balanced Payments to process the payments, which charges 2.9% + 30c per payout (and additional 25c per deposit). I'm skeptical that users would even be willing to pay this rate...