This Startup Is Trying To Solve The Most Annoying Part About Going Out To Eat With Friends
Flickr/abrackinGoing out to dinner with friends is great, until the bill arrives.
“There are three problems with the dinner bill," Splitwise co-founder Jon Bittner tells Business Insider. "I don’t know what everyone ordered, I can't do the math, and I don’t have the money."
Plates by Splitwise, which just launched today, lets you split fairly without needing to make sure every single penny adds up. It figures out tax and tip, too.
Plates aims to create harmony between the "just split it evenly" bunch and those who are set on paying exactly what they owe. After you assign a few items to diners, you can just "split the rest" instead of having to input every single dish.
For example, you could itemize the wine and an appetizer, but then split the rest of the bill.
There are a slew of similar bill-splitting apps out there, but Bittner says Plates can split a bill way faster than any other app. Also, Bittner says many of its competitors, like Billr, charge a fee for the app. But Plates is totally free.
Plates is part of Splitwise, a bill splitting startup founded in 2011. Plates is currently only available for iOS, but an Android app is on the way.