Venmo May Have Just Killed in Half
I love Splitwise . The app makes it easy and simple to share expenses among a group of people. No one should feel underpaid, just as no one should leave without putting in their fair share: everyone writes down what they paid for, and the app tells you how much you owe whom (or who owes you what).
However, the main disadvantage of a service like Splitwise is that it is a separate service. While it helps you split costs, you almost always need to exit the app to actually pay people. Note that this is no big deal: People can, for example, connect their Venmo accounts to Splitwise, so with one click you can launch Venmo for checkout. But it’s not as easy as it could be if, say, Venmo simply created its own feature similar to Splitwise.
Oh oh.
Venmo Groups Could Be a Splitwise Killer
On Tuesday, Venmo announced “Venmo Groups,” a new feature that lets you track group spending directly within Venmo. The feature is gradually rolling out to users starting today and should be fully available in the coming weeks.
It looks easy enough to use: start by going to the Me tab in the app, then clicking the new Create Group button at the top of the page. I currently have a button, but when I click on it it tells me that the feature is “coming soon”. However, once it’s up and running, you can add members and create a group name, and then start tracking expenses. Once everyone has submitted their payments, you can click Request Quote.
Since this feature is so new, it’s hard to say how it compares to something like Splitwise. However, even if the Venmo option lacks the key features you’ll find in Splitwise, the sheer convenience of tracking expenses and managing payments in one app will likely be a strong enough factor to move people from third-party apps to Venmo if they use Venmo in the first place for payments.
Of course, not everyone uses Venmo. Some people use Cash App, others Zelle, and others still prefer paying with cash the old school way. These are the users Splitwise will most likely count on in the future, but they will have to be aggressive to retain them. I could see this becoming an iMessage situation. If all your friends use Venmo, you’ll have to create a Venmo account to keep up with the group.