Expensify Ventures Into Personal Payments With New App

Expensify says it has made its first venture into the personal payments space with its new app.

The firm says its new offering, announced Monday (Oct. 23), is an expansion of the company’s business expense management technology, designed for consumer payments.

David Barrett, founder and CEO of Expensify, described the app as the “consumer-grade lovechild between WhatsApp, Venmo, and Splitwise.”

According to a company news release, the launch lets groups that include friends, roommates, student organization, church groups, neighborhood associations and professional societies use Expensify for financial collaboration.

“Let’s say you’re planning a trip with friends,” Barrett said. “You start a group chat in New Expensify and decide to book an Airbnb. After it’s booked, you scan the receipt into the same chat, split it between everyone, and the money requests fire off automatically. Your friends pay you back in the app as well, so you’re all settled up in a few taps.”

Expensify said it is piloting an early version of bill splitting in New Expensify at the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas this week, offering it to groups of attendees who use the app to split their bill for dinner or drinks (up to a set amount).

The launch comes at a time when consumers are increasingly seeing the appeal of a unified platform or everyday app that consolidates shopping, banking and other daily digital tasks.

Findings detailed in “Consumer Interest in an Everyday App,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and PayPal collaboration, show that a growing number of consumers in the U.S. and Australia are seeking ways to simplify their routine shopping and banking experiences,

That study also showed that approximately 60% of U.S. consumers are interested in managing their banking using an everyday app.

“Drilling down into the data further reveals the desire of consumers in both countries to consolidate their app-based retail and grocery shopping into an everyday app,” PYMNTS wrote last month. “In fact, nearly 7 in 10 respondents in the U.S. expressed a strong desire for an app that combines their retail and grocery shopping activities.”

In addition, managing personal banking as well as managing savings and investments are the features that nearly 60% of consumers say they’d like to see in an everyday app.