There’s A New Way To Make Sure Everyone Pays Up On Your Next Group Trip
Splitting a group bill is the worst. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, people are generally terrible at maths and there’s always someone who wants to transfer later – and nobody wants to be the person chasing their mate for money. And you can multiply this frustration by 100 if you need friends to pay up for a group holiday.
Americans have had apps like Venmo to do group bill splitting and chasing for years and now finally, Australians can do all that (plus a few other handy things) with Revolut officially launching.
Revolut is an app for all things money.
It’s been in Australia since 2019 in testing mode (but launched in the UK in 2015) and had a 30,000-strong waitlist. It’s now rolled out officially and can be downloaded in your device’s app store.
The app lets you transfer and hold up to 27 foreign currencies without any exchange mark-ups or hidden fees — and as someone who has repeatedly fallen prey to travel money card rorts, this is a stand out feature. It also allows you to instantly transfer money to local and international friends.
You can request money from the split bill, so kiss goodbye awkward texts. Instead, it sends a reminder to your forgetful mate on your behalf.
But the best part? You can create groups with your friends to save towards your goal (i.e holiday).
Say you want to head away on a road trip and need to start saving, you’d use the app feature called ‘Group Vaults’, which lets multiple people round up their payments, popping the difference aside to start saving (kind of like Acorns). That way, everyone in your group can get hyped watching the savings rise and your holiday roll closer.
Once your holiday expenses start, let the app take care of group splitsies. Add bills to your group (which you can customise with a name and photo) to track them all in one place. When it’s time to split, the app lets you decide exactly how much of a bill each person needs to pay back and works out all the tricky maths. If you’re all on Revolut, you can do instant transfers.
Imagine how much more time there would be to sip margaritas or swim or eat or surf when you’re not fussing over bills every day of your trip. The Group Bills feature is also super handy for buying group gifts.
There’s a bunch of other things you can do on the app.
There’s a virtual Visa card generator for online purchases with extra security, budgeting tools, Apple and Google Pay and cryptocurrency capabilities — all from your phone.
And if you have a penchant for international online shopping, Revolut holds multiple currencies, plus offers the real exchange rate without international transaction fees — and saving on these fees adds up big over time.
“Most young Australians manage the lion’s share of their life through their mobile phones now, and we believe it should be no different for managing their finances — whether it’s something as simple as budgeting and splitting bills, or something more complex such as purchasing cryptocurrencies or commodities,” says CEO of Revolut Australia, Matt Baxby.
It’s refreshing that Aussies are finally getting every feature for being a global citizen in one app.
(Lead Image: Unsplash /Jed Villejo)
