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Comment by Domenic_S | Hacker News Reader

I feel that. We can be old geezers together. We've had a solution to this "problem" for centuries: cash.

If your group is too lazy to ask the server to split the tab 4 ways, what in the world makes you think they're all going to pull out their apps and pay this way? Then there's inevitably someone who doesn't have a smartphone, or doesn't have that app, or doesn't want to sign up for a new payment account, or doesn't like using credit cards online, or whatever.

More than a couple times I've been sitting there with people trying to add up their totals, some taking out cash, some taking out cards, arguing over who pays what, and just paid the whole thing and asked them to buy me coffee or a meal or whatever when they can.

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With restaurant bills, things get rather complicated when everyone orders different items, someone bought a Groupon, etc. Unless people are OK with over/under paying, a bill splitting app can be pretty useful to figure out what everyone actually owes.

Cash works well when everyone has it, but from what I've seen that doesn't happen all that often. Also, you get a lot of restaurants that refuse to itemize the bill (maybe their point of sale system doesn't support it), and sometimes they'll only take 1 credit card. Integration with payment apps is great for that. It goes beyond saving time...an app can help make sure people pay up and the IOUs don't become permanent.

Disclosure: I recently released Grouptuity (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.grouptuity), which tries to solve these problems and integrates with Venmo.

Usually, there's a minimum charge ('gratuity') for parties of 6 or 8 or more, so they better damn well split the bills for us. I've had it be a problem twice in the past 6 years of dining out, and once was sort of my own doing (we had a party of 24 on a Friday night - I just paid it as a single thing vs having everyone split it up - it was an unusual event). The other time it happened was a party of 5 and the server refused to split up the bill. We all chipped in something, but I don't go back there anymore.

Maybe it's a bigger problem in some areas of the world, but not mine.

"We can be old geezers together"

Not only that but it's like Nero is fiddling while Rome burns. North Korea is building up an arsenal to strike the US. And our best and brightest are solving big problems like this.

The best and brightest are working as US diplomats, or are doing intelligence gathering on NK's capabilities, or are maintaining our nuclear arsenal. It's only within the HN, Silicon Valley echo chamber that the "best and brightest" are working on social networks for cats.

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