Splitting payments, whether it’s rent or groceries or a restaurant bill, is shit.
It’s just awkward. The more people involved, the worse it gets. Fighting over who got that extra Diet Coke? It tears friendships apart.
Thankfully, Airbnb appreciate this modern-day sticky predicament, and have thus just introduced split payments.
Log into your app right now and you’ll see that when it comes to the paying bit, you can now split the payment up between multiple users. That means no more awkward reminders! No more pestering in the group chat! No more IOU’s!
They’re the first accommodation provider to build and implement a seamless, global split payments feature to travellers around the world.
According to the digs-sharing app, people being shiccunts and not paying their share of the bill is deeply common.
For those that have traveled with a group, two-fifths (38%) have experienced not receiving all the money owed from a group trip.
Of these people, a whopping 43 percent have lost $1,000 or more in group trip repayments.
The wheels for this headache-reducing development were put in motion back in 2016, when Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky asked Twitter what the platform should introduce in 2017.
If @Airbnb could launch anything in 2017, what would it be?
— Brian Chesky (@bchesky) December 26, 2016
Overwhelmingly, the people wanted split payments. And less than a year later, that’s what the peoples got.
It works like this:
When a trip organiser requests to book a listing that qualifies for splitting payments, the reservation is put in an “awaiting payment” state, with the organiser’s portion of the booking charged on their credit card while the host’s calendar is blocked. The organiser can hold a reservation for up to 72 hours, giving time to others in the group to log on to Airbnb and pay their portion. You can learn more here.
You beauty.
