Why we decided to tackle group spending

When group holidays or social events go well, these can become the memories that last a lifetime. Yet, we know that a few niggles can easily change this experience.

One thing we’ve continually heard is shared bills and expenses gets in the way of these activities: a dinner ruined by a disagreement about how to split the bill; A flatshare soured by quibbles about the rent; holidays marred by a friend being out of pocket for months for the AirBnB.

We wanted to take the hassle out of managing these moments so you can focus on what’s important — enjoying yourself.

With “Groups”, our simple and smart tracker, we help ensure everyone is kept up-to-date and no one is left holding the bill.

Our vision is to make money social and we believe that “Groups” is the foundation for that. By ensuring transparency and clarity over your financial relationships with others, we want to take the hassle out of knowing how much you owe, who’s paid and who hasn’t.

The problem

Through our own experiences, getting a list of everyone’s expenses alongside who owes who, nearly always resulted in one big complicated spreadsheet, followed by a never-ending text messages and the occasional falling out.

We were sick of this and knew there was a better way of doing things. Yet, we wanted to make sure that others were also having the same issues. We asked and 500 of you responded, here’s what we discovered:

We also found that 40% of those surveyed are paying for things that total over £100 with 10% making purchases over £300. 50% used tools that weren’t great but the ones that did work were extremely valuable. These events are expensive and with getting paid back taking a long time, we thought there should be a product to fix this.

This was enough for us to tackle this problem head-on. We believe fundamentally that all transactions are inherently social. When you lend a friend £50, you’re not only lending money. You’re building your relationship and we want to help make that easier.

We think that thousands of these connections happen between friends and family every single day, and keeping track of them is hard. B-Social aims to make this simple and transparent and downright lovable.

How we’re fixing the problem today

Let’s get a few things out of the way first: tracking payments between multiple people for many things is hard. It’s all too easy to forget that you missed a payment to a friend or that you still owe them for the holiday you’ve spent months organising.

With our app, you can create multiple “Groups” to track your spending on holidays, dinners, flatshare or house expenses. This is powered by sophisticated and complex technology under the hood in order to provide you with a simple experience.

Today you can:

• Split any bill, from flights to your regular brunch meetups.
• View your balance within a group, see who owes and who’s owed.
• Record payments between people.
• See total group and personal spending.

We’re using technology to ensure that friends and family have a healthy view of their social financial situation and in turn ensure you have a positive impact on your social network. Most people are very honest but little debts can slip their mind. With our app that’s no longer a problem as you can clearly see who owes who and how much.

How we’ll fix it in the future

This is just the start. We want to make the whole experience amazing with an app you love. Some of the ideas we’re thinking about are:

• Adding your existing current account to view and split those transactions.
• Receipt scanning.
• Adding photos to bills so you can add receipts or those funny moments from nights out.
• Ability to pay more than one person at a time.

We also want to know what you’d like us to do next and what you use your “Groups” for.

Let us know by either leaving a comment below or via Live chat, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. We will respond to every message we receive.

To download the app, visit either the App Store or Google Play.

We’re always looking for talented people to join our amazing team! Check out our careers page to see our current vacancies and get in touch.

We aren’t a bank yet, but we are in the process of applying to the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to become one!

The B-Social card is a Beta debit Mastercard® and can be used wherever Mastercard® is accepted. Mastercard is a registered trademark, and the circles design is a trademark of Mastercard International Incorporated. The Card is issued by Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd (“WDCS”) pursuant to license by Mastercard International Inc. WDCS is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority to conduct electronic money service activities under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 (Ref: 900051)

This is an e-money product and not covered by FSCS deposit protection.