ALL the time. It's the replacement for cash. Looking at the past 6 months in my history: Split numerous restaurant bills. Paid someone who bought me a concert ticket. Bought some crap in a flea market. Bought a set of used wheels for my car. Bought a hotdog at the son's hockey game cafeteria. Bet the office sports tournament pool. Bought food in a hospital ward. Bought soda in a vending machine. Of these many happened multiple times and the clear majority were to individuals. During these 6 months I have not touched cash.

I should add: the reason this system is so convenient I’d because it’s a) tied directly to my bank account and doesn’t need me to add money to a “wallet” and b) The only system around, so when splitting a restaurant bill there is no chance someone doesn’t use it, and no chance anyone has any other system. c) Free.

Besides looking almost exactly as the written version of an advertisment used to promote the same solution(different name) in our country, what an extraordinary probe into your personal life!

Just asking, because I'm interested. Do you use it to pay Amazon? Your phone bill? You power provider? These are the areas I (Germany) currently use SEPA direct debit and would know how SEPA payments is used/replaced in other countries.

utility bills and other regular stuff like that can be delivered electronically to your bank account in Sweden, such that you just log in and approve them. domestic online purchases are commonly paid by card, by a direct bank transfer that's done integrated as part of the checkout, or through Klarna where your just approve the purchase and then sort it out with them afterwards.

Nice!

No (well, not quite), for online purchases in web shops I either just use my card or I use "bank direct payment" which goes via the same authorization (BankID smartphone app) used for both the direct to phone-number payments (Swish) and for online banking in most/all banks and other major companies and authorities.

I don't get paper bills for services such as phone/power/water/insurance/tv, they are delivered to my bank electronically and either paid automatically or I log in (BankID smartphone app) and confirm the payments.

So the transfer system isn't used for bills, but the same authorization system is used for bills/banking and direct transfer.

Thanks!

I find I need to do it quite often. Usually because, for speed or convenience, one person in a group has paid for something, like movie tickets, a round of drinks, or the bill a restaurant. Being able to do it easily and immediately makes it much less likely that you'll forget and require your friend either to take a loss, or deal with the awkwardness of chasing people for money.

Right now we use Revolut for this, where possible. But that only works when the person receiving the cash also uses it, which isn't always the case. Having a more universal system that works for everyone would be very handy.

One amusing thing about doing this approach is that, if you tend to split who does the principal payment evenly between your group of friends, then you realise you are rarely adding or removing funds from your Revolut account, you are just shuffling the same small sums back and forth between yourselves in order to keep things fair.

I'll be off topic I'm afraid but I did want to share my perspective on this. I've lived in two cultures - one where people split the bill and one where one person just pays for it and someone else does the next time and so on. I much prefer the latter approach and among well meaning people, it is hassle free. I believe this is so because on the long run, the differences don't add up to much.

I think, in some way, for me, it "shows more acceptance". I noticed that in the "split accurately" way, the greater resistance was not to pay for it but to have someone else pay for it - which in a way is disallowing someone from doing something small for you at that point of time. I dealt with this by proposing that the other person(s) could do it the next time etc. Some would find the proposal acceptable, some wouldn't.

I found that when I "converted" people this way, it led to a more relaxed setting. Perhaps it was a problem with me - finding it difficult to accept money from friends for just a cup of coffee or a meal. For me that meant the relationship was not important and the 'book had to be closed and made to add up'...

Of course, ultimately, these are only anecdotes - make of it what you will.

(Ninja EDIT: Minor clarification)

If you split and the next person pays the next time there is an assumption that it will likely happen again. If it’s a group of people that aren’t close friends it’s very convenient to not have to worry about that.

I wouldn’t swish my friend for getting a beer or coffee but if we were 4 and had a dinner bill for €300 I probably would.

I am still confused, can't the restaurant personnel take care of this? In my life wait stuff is capable of parsing following requests:

- bring me my check, pls

- bring me the check, pls. And I pay for these two bozos (out of a bigger group)

- I'll cover everyone today.

- split it x-ways, pls.

Why do I need to add an extra step to consolidate the bill afterwards?

They will do that, but it's cumbersome I think, especially if you had a large group ordering a lot of different things. And even more so if there was drinking involved. Now I just charge it to my card, snap a pic with my phone of the receipt and send to everyone at the table, and they can just swish the money over the next day or on the train home when they have time to deal with it. Keeps the accounting out of a fun night out.

Also it's easy to join a group that already have a table/tab in a bar for example, and leave before the tab is to be settled. You just say "I'm leaving, who do I swish money for 2 pints?" (Where you'd normally leave some cash on the table).

But they are supposed to account for your orders and not just bill you out of thin air, right? So what is so cumbersome of keeping track of the orders. It is literally biggest part of their job - taking an order and remembering correctly who ordered what.

Perhaps, but if I said to staff we wanted to pay individually, he’d simply ask everyone “ok what on this receipt did YOU have?”. They might have a vague idea since they took the orders earlier, but it would still be a slow and cumbersome process. I think even paying in the simplest and quickest way possible (all on one card) is more of a hassle than I’d like.

So yes, the staff can do it. But I don’t mind summing up my stuff on the receipt and just sending money to whoever paid, and the reason I prefer it is because it’s so much quicker when paying (the hassle takes place at a different time and place).

It’s not uncommon to be served by 2 or 3 different people who of course remember who orders an extra beer when they go get it - but that information isn’t recorded, it’s just registered to the receipt on the table. When the bill is brought to the table I think it’s more common than not that the person bringing it did not serve everything on the receipt so would not be able to split the bill without input from the customers.

Do you think they just do this all in their heads?

It's not cumbersome at all, they have POS systems that track individuals at tables, not whole tickets. The server inputs for the table as well as which chair they are sitting in. Then it is very easy to split a ticket in a variety of ways. I think you are complicating the process in your mind or you frequent places that don't use technology.

> I think you are complicating the process in your mind or you frequent places that don't use technology.

I think it varies, that kind of tech would only benefit a regular sit-down restaurants where the chairs are in fixed spots and constant. It doesn't work for a busy bar with me shouting "3 more beers" as the waiter walks by.

I assume the same or similar POS tech is used everywhere but in most places here I assume waiting staff either ignore it or charge everything to "chair 1" at the table, simply because so very very few ever split a bill to who ordered it. Since no one does, it's less work taking the hit when someone does (and asking people manually) rather than assigning orders to chairs all those times when no one splits. Obviously, that would also change if more people would split - so I'm guessing that with tech for splitting bills without staff help so prevalent here, it won't be common to have staff split bills.

right on. I don't really go to busy bars (or bars when they are busy, crowds don't work for me at all) so I can't relate. When I was younger and did go to bars that were busy starting a tab wasn't really a thing, you paid for you drink when it came.

US waiters probably don't have time for this.. they're too busy providing good service by running around asking "How's your meal? Everything good?" every 45 seconds.

Getting caught in the middle of billing disputes wouldn't be fun either. Easier to just require someone pay the whole thing.

In my experience in the US, many restaurants don't want to deal with complicated splitting up of the bill. Most will allow for two-way splits but beyond that, many will be reluctant or outright refuse.

It's all anekdata, but I never had this problem in US restaurants. Even at bigger gatherings when kids will sit together with other kids at the other end of a table, it is never a problem to pay for your spouse and that kid in a red shirt. After all, that's why they charge mandatory tips on bigger parties.

In the subculture I come from, splitting is the typical method, because many can't afford to just pay for everyone without risking going out of money before the next paycheck.

Agreed. I have experienced this when I had cashflow problems. I do not dare claim that either of the approaches has its own issues. I just stated how I felt about both ways of doing things and why I preferred one over the other.

I’m gonna guess that the non-splitting country has a much flatter distribution of wealth?

Interesting.

You are right indeed but might I ask how you made this connection? I never thought of it this way. One reason for it is probably that between my friends and me, there wasn't much disparity in income/wealth at the time when I was fortunate enough to be able to spend time with them regularly.

When people generally have less income disparity, their lifestyles will be more or less the same, and over time a culture of "well we spend about the same amount so let's just split it" can arise.

In other places (like the US), some people can be very conscious about how much they're spending because it's a significant portion of their income. You wouldn't want to split the check when you had a $10 salad to save money and a tablemate had the $50 filet and 2 $10 glasses of wine.

My spanish teacher, for example, accepts all payments via a similar method. She has several skype students based all over the world and the traditional methods of transfer are expensive and unwieldy.

There are also issues with Spain being rather anti people setting up simple businesses from home.

I do it all the time. Split a bill in a restaurant, repay someone for tickets that they bought for me, getting my flatmates to pay their share of the electric bill, paying a flatmate back for stuff that they picked up in the shops for me, loan someone money, get a loan to someone repaid, settling up after losing some money at poker. That's all within the last few weeks.

Too much of that and it becomes taxable "income" in less advanced Democracies.

Really? Most of them were just various ways of splitting or repaying bills. The loan I will admit might be in a somewhat legally grey area.

Traditionally only if you are charging an interest rate. There are a few rules in the US around lending money to non-family and expecting it to be paid back.

IANAL, but I lend a lot of money, and this is what I've been told:

If you give without the expectation it is typically just cash swapping hands in both directions. If you give money to a non family member and expect payments (with or without interest) OR to a family member and expect more than a rate that is defined at the IRS (<1%, IIRC), then the income is taxable. How they tax you on a no-interest loan to a non-family member, I have no idea.

A no-interest loan to a non-family member is taxed as income to the borrower. They impute an interest rate and say that amount is income since a free loan has a value. I'm not sure what exactly the rate they impute is or how large the loan has to be before they do this.

Ah, that is very similar to if the company you work for loans you money. I'm assuming the rate is probably the same as the max interest rate for a family loan.

To back up the rest of the anecdata here, I'd also say "all the time". Mainly for tickets, or dinner, or bills in a shared house. In fact, because most UK banks have pretty OK mobile apps, you can do it there and then, and with Faster Payments, it'll be in the recipient's account before the transaction actually comes out.

How often do you have outlays for another person or give someone cash?

The application can be used for any transaction. I usually use it if I've been out with some friends, then it's super easy to split the bill afterwards. Or if going shopping. Or if we share a taxi.

Before we would either settle in cash or by trying to spend approximately the same. Now everything is done this way.

That's atleast the way it works in Denmark.

It's one of the biggest successes in the fintech sector.

MobilePay in Denmark, Venmo, Cash, Paypal in the US most of the use debit card/bank accounts.

One of the problems turning it into a business though is that the Durbin Amendment and national legislation have reduced the interchange fees so that it's hard/illegal to charge for use of the card.

But it's a booming business that only just started.

I used the app four times since I moved to Sweden 2 years ago. I haven't touched cash, actually I am not sure how the current notes/coins (they changed them) look like. If you shop in stores/restaurants then you use cards mostly. Swish in my experience is for splitting bills (less common), at after work parties when someone buys beers and you pay them back, for very small vendors who do not want to bother with banks for getting CC terminals.

Yes, in most of Europe it's a primary method of payment for anything people in US would use a cheque for (and most EU countries no longer have cheques at all). It is also often used for online purchases instead of cc, but that varies more per country. This is also how you pay your taxes and how vast majority of b2b payments are done.

It's cheap, fast and simple - all you need is a name of account holder and account number.

I think you are misunderstanding. Swish is not traditional online bank transfer. Swish is like sms. You just need the phone number and the transfer is nearly instant. You would normally use it between friends, not for bills, b2b, taxes or paying in the supermarket.

Anecdotally I'm doing it at least once a week. Unlike several other respondents I rarely split a food bill (easier to just do that in the restaurant), but whenever there's advance tickets that need buying for transport or basically anything with an entrance fee (gig, play, sporting event, etc) then IME 100% of the time one person buys and the other attendees make them whole.

A lot. In Denmark, if you go out with 3 friends, one pays the bill at the restaurant and the others transfer their share to him (with one swipe on the phone to the friends phone number or email address that you already have so no need to set up receivers).

When you go to a birthday afterwards, one has bought the present and the others transfer their part to him.

Danes send money to eachother daily.

In Australia I transfer money to mates at least once a week. Makes going to the pub or out to dinner with friends so much easier.

New technologies change behaviour. People are offended now when I offer cash to split the bill in Singapore. They immediate retort with "PayLah!" the name of the local version of this service.

Multiple times a week. Like if you go out with friends and have them pay for something for you.

Most people use it at least once a week, I use it around 2-5 times per week. It's awesome.

I transfer money to individuals multiple times a week via Square Cash or Venmo.

This is the entire basis of Venmo. That's pretty popular.