« Previous post
Next post »

January 20, 2006

BillMonk - Social Money

Michael Arrington

61 comments »

BillMonk is a new service that allows people to easily keep track of financial debts among friends. It’s a simple idea and they’ve executed well.

The idea is a user who wants to report a debt owed to him or her (such as a shared bill), or an IOU to another person, simply enters it on BillMonk. This is very easy to do on BillMonk, even for more complicated transactions like a bill shared among a lot of people. You simply input the amount of the bill and the email addresses for those who participated. There is also an SMS feature to allow users to text in bills on the phone.

I like the way BillMonk keeps track of all of the various transactions a user has with different people, and the current amount owed at any given time. For instance, if I buy dinner for my friend Orli Yakuel and we decide to split the $100 bill, and later I owe her $8 for coffee, BillMonk knows that she only owes me a total of $42. When I tell BillMonk that she’s paid me $20, it automatically lowers the amount owed to me to $22.

Of course, if the people I am emailing are not yet using the service, they can sign up. So they’ve got the viral angle covered.

It’s useful, and really easy to use without FAQ references. There is also a way to SMS bills in via a mobile device. As of now, however, they have not integrated paypal or any other payment API.

Scott Loftesness and John Cook have also recently written about BillMonk. The company was founded by Gaurav Oberoi and Chuck Groom, who previously worked at Amazon.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Friday, January 20th, 2006 at 10:58 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. Notes from the Bill Monk » Blog Archive » TechCrunch review

    January 20th, 2006 at 11:31 pm

  2. Ben Casnocha: The Blog

    January 21st, 2006 at 9:26 am

  3. BillSaysThis on RawSugar

    January 21st, 2006 at 11:29 am

  4. Ramblings of a Short Man » Blog Archive » BillMonk: well-executed, cool idea

    January 21st, 2006 at 12:04 pm

  5. teknokool.net » links for 2006-01-22

    January 22nd, 2006 at 7:28 am

  6. artimeg.com » Blog Archive » BillMonk

    January 22nd, 2006 at 12:17 pm

  7. VentureWeek » VentureWeek #7 - Week Ending 1/23/06

    January 23rd, 2006 at 11:13 pm

  8. Business Garden

    January 24th, 2006 at 4:56 am

  9. Scott Loftesness

    January 28th, 2006 at 9:57 am

  10. TechCrunch » Nine Startups at E27 Summit

    January 28th, 2006 at 5:28 pm

  11. Notes from the Bill Monk » Blog Archive » Trip to the Bay Area

    January 30th, 2006 at 5:33 pm

  12. TechCrunch » Everyone Send Me $5

    February 15th, 2006 at 12:15 am

  13. Notes from the Bill Monk » Blog Archive » Picking a Payment Service

    February 15th, 2006 at 12:48 pm

  14. Gansik blog » Blog Archive » Everyone Send Me $5

    February 16th, 2006 at 11:27 am

  15. אנקדוטות » מי זה אוריאל אוחיון?

    March 1st, 2006 at 11:27 am

  16. It looks obvious » Blog Archive » Who is the Mysterious Orli?

    April 11th, 2006 at 4:46 am

  17. ExtraEight

    April 16th, 2006 at 12:31 pm

  18. Web X.0

    April 24th, 2006 at 5:01 pm

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Arjun

    January 20th, 2006 at 11:33 pm

    this site is great!

  2. met

    January 21st, 2006 at 1:06 am

    That means all my debts will remain @ billmonk till I die :)

  3. yankeefan

    January 21st, 2006 at 1:23 am

    This site does it for me, its 1999 all over again. You can imagine a business of letting other people store their transactions on your servers and presenting a UI for them to edit it - wow.

  4. FORCER

    January 21st, 2006 at 2:53 am

    Looks really good but if only they could allow setting a default currency different than US $. At now, this service is useless for other countries…

  5. Gaurav Oberoi

    January 21st, 2006 at 3:21 am

    FORCER, do not despair! We are working on it. Check out our blog post on this very topic:
    http://billmonk.wordpress.com/.....onal-soon/

  6. Jason Hawryluk

    January 21st, 2006 at 3:45 am

    Would someone please explain to me how this site is considered Web 2.0 ? All I see is the regular page refreshes, no Ajax, and only on small spot where they use a floating layer.

    So with that, why are you talking about it ? Oh, and if this is the Web 2.0 experience we can expect from a Web 2.0 site, then you should really create Web 3.0 already.

    On another note, It is a good idea, and intuitive for anyone to get use to quickly. I hope they do well with it.

  7. John

    January 21st, 2006 at 4:10 am

    That’s just seriously stupid.

  8. Pierre

    January 21st, 2006 at 4:16 am

    Business model, please?

  9. Gaurav Oberoi

    January 21st, 2006 at 4:21 am

    Pierre, you can read about our profit motive in our FAQ: https://www.billmonk.com/about/faq#profit

  10. Pierre

    January 21st, 2006 at 4:23 am

    Thanks Gaurav.

    Building direct relationships with financial institutions is probably one of the toughest kind of partnerships I’ve had to build in my career… So good luck with it…

    Or are you rather shooting for an acquisition by PayPal? ;)

    Cheers.

  11. Chris

    January 21st, 2006 at 6:19 am

    Anyone seen http://www.textpayme.com? It’s the concept of paying through SMS, and I’m not sure you even have to sign up (what do other people think of that concept? pros, cons?). I think BillMonk is definitely the more “complete solution” at the moment, so I hope they do well.

  12. BlogReader

    January 21st, 2006 at 7:35 am

    I’m not sure how this is Web 2.0 but I do know that this takes something personal between two or more people and gives it all the humanity of a 20 point checklist at the local car oil changing shop.

    Is there a space on here for how many times you’ve opened a door for a coworker? What about the number of times you’ve cooked a meal for your kid? By my count its your turn as I’m up 8 meals in 2.3 months.

  13. jay

    January 21st, 2006 at 8:16 am

    This stuff is hopeless. Textpayme is even worse.

  14. Ryan Williams

    January 21st, 2006 at 8:58 am

    BillMonk looks interesting. A great way to harass your friends to pay up :-)

    Since you’re on the subject of social money, be sure to check out NetworthIQ (http://www.networthiq.com), a social personal finance manager.

  15. Arjun

    January 21st, 2006 at 11:29 am

    I’m surprised to see some of these negative comments here. If anyone has ever lived with roommates, or been low-budget back in college, they’ll know why this service is great. I hope it spreads and does well!

  16. Chuck Groom

    January 21st, 2006 at 2:07 pm

    […]Would someone please explain to me how this site is considered Web 2.0 ? All I see is the regular page refreshes, no Ajax, and only on small spot where they use a floating layer.[…]

    I’d be delighted to answer this question!

    Web 2.0 is a slippery term. I take it to mean a website that is effectively an application that solves a focused problem in a simple way. The term is also regularly linked to certain technologies and mindsets; Ajax, lots of javascripting, RoR, tagging, social networking, informal, small-company, &c.

    BillMonk meets all the criteria I just listed, except for tagging (coming soon!)

    There is a lot of Ajax scattered throughout the site, especially on the shared bill page. We will add more, but only where it either simplifies tasks or speeds things up.

    Same thing goes for Javascript and floating layers. There’s a lot on the site (note the nifty client-side graphs on a friend page!). It can be useful. But we prefer to only use as much as helps our users.

    I’m actually pretty happy that people don’t realize this stuff is happening, because I don’t like it when technologies call attention to themselves. :)

  17. Fortin

    January 21st, 2006 at 3:51 pm

    I guess i’m still not getting why any sizable base would use this site? I get the concept but cannot seem to grasp the market appeal or need.

    Is this really addressing a pain point on the market? Also, is their business model?

  18. anthropocentric

    January 21st, 2006 at 7:14 pm

    is it just me or will this name be really offensive to some people?

  19. met

    January 21st, 2006 at 9:15 pm

    If my roommates don’t pay me already.. how’s this going to help?
    The way I see it people will say ‘let it be in the system’, next time I pay for something, it will be evened out.

    I haven’t registered at the site, so I am not sure whether it has this feature -

    I used to live with 2 other people in college and we used to share expenses. If it was possible to setup one expenses account with just the members (3 in this case) - it would be cool.
    Nothing that excel can’t do :) but it would be nice to have something online.

  20. Ted

    January 21st, 2006 at 10:16 pm

    Good coding and design work. Idea? Not so much. Very little liklihood of catching on. I suggest that the people involved keep up their work and think about every possible way this application could work, not the original idea.

  21. PavedWalden

    January 21st, 2006 at 10:16 pm

    The Group Settlement feature could be very interesting. It reminds me of the reputation network described in the early chapters of Accelerando, where debts and favors display a communicative property across several degrees of your social network. Our hero walks into a shop and his digital assistant informs him that the merchant can repay a favor he did a year ago for somebody else in another country! Perhaps there is an unseen niche somewhere between PayPal and Friendster.

    Best of luck growing your service!

  22. Dana

    January 22nd, 2006 at 12:32 am

    i think this is a great idea! way better than the messy whiteboard we used to have up in our house to keep track of all the roommate expenses. at the end of the month it always took us two weeks just to get around to doing the math.

  23. John Butler

    January 22nd, 2006 at 1:56 am

    This is a very good idea!
    I still won’t be able to get money out of my brothers though:D

  24. Squire

    January 22nd, 2006 at 3:15 am

    I guess it is a bad idea to let some company know how about your financial status.. only a person who is naive would opt to disclose their status to financial institutions or companies who make profit through us by knowing our identity or financial status by targetting advertising or deciding on issues like loans or mortgate etc . People should be aware of this before they put their trust in a “corporation” ..

  25. Jason Hawryluk

    January 22nd, 2006 at 3:39 am

    Web 2.0 is a slippery term. I take it to mean a website that is effectively an application that solves a focused problem in a simple way. The term is also regularly linked to certain technologies and mindsets; Ajax, lots of javascripting, RoR, tagging, social networking, informal, small-company, &c.

    BillMonk meets all the criteria I just listed, except for tagging (coming soon!)

    First thanks for answering. I was not putting down your site it looks good as I stated, and I really do hope you do well with it. However I had always taken Web 2.0 to mean..

    Engaging user experiences not synonymous with Web 1.0.
    A new level of interactivity closer to the desktop experience.
    Reaction to user interaction without “full” page refreshes i.e. refresh only the content or area required.
    (List more here …)

    As you state above “an application that solves a focused problem in a simple way” this is a developers job, and has always been the directive of any development effort. Certainly not a Web 2.0 exclusive, as this mentality has been around since the net began. Take a blog for example, been around for some 5 years, well before someone coined Web 2.0, and directly applies to your comment.

    To me and IMHO the technology employed has nothing to do what so ever with Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is too finally deliver on the promise of the above for internet based services. All of the technology and ideas have been around for some time either on the desktop or on the web well before someone over at Adaptive Path (depends who you talk to) coined the term Ajax.

    And then again, I may be way off on my understanding of Web 2.0. In any case your effort put into your project warrants merit.

    I will try it out further. I was just not sure that this was the place for it. However this is not my site, and I have confidence in Michael to bring me new information on Web 2.0 creations. I apologize if my first comments seemed aggressive.

  26. Jason Hawryluk

    January 22nd, 2006 at 3:42 am

    On # 29 the first and second paragraph were quoted by Chuck Groom. I intended to show that. Sorry.

  27. Hans Martin Kern

    January 22nd, 2006 at 3:46 am

    May I suggest that - among friends - such a site is useless? Because - as a friend - you will always make sure that you don’t take advantage of your friends?

  28. Erik Schwartz

    January 22nd, 2006 at 5:30 am

    It seems well implemented.

    It’s not a bad product.

    But it will never catch on. Here’s why…

    Who loses out in the group spending dynamic? The schlubs of the group, the hangers on, the B-list kids. That’s the group where the pain is. The A-list kids, the leaders ride these people and they like it.

    The problem comes from how new products spread throughout markets. Read some Malcolm Gladwell, look into the work of DeeDee Gordon. New products spread through groups via the alpha kids. They’re the ones who set the trends of what to where, where to eat, what to buy, what’s cool.

    So you’ve built a product that is targeted at the b-list getting even financially with the a-list. But in doing that you’ve ostricized you’re greatest marketing tool, which is the a-list. The a-list knows that they take advantage of the b-list, are they going to spread the use of a product that goes against their self interests? I’m guessing no.

    Just my .02

    -Erik (who spent 3 years at Yahoo! taking pitches from companies that wanted to partner or be bought out by us. I almost always said no).

  29. Ross Weinstein

    January 22nd, 2006 at 9:06 am

    Anyone remember GroupMoney (formerly gMoney.com)?

  30. Sammy D.

    January 22nd, 2006 at 1:56 pm

    Ross, first thing I thought of as well…this is a clone (conceptually) of the 2000ish gMoney website - now known as GroupMoney. Good idea, but I doubt the masses will come running…will be hard to harness users, unless a larger social network buys it up with users at the ready.

  31. TAD

    January 22nd, 2006 at 7:27 pm

    I blogged about this here:

    http://tadspot.com/2006/01/22/.....b20-style/

  32. Michael Arrington

    January 22nd, 2006 at 7:31 pm

    I love it when people see something here, write about it on their own blog without linking to techcrunch, and then leave a comment here linking back to their post. Sigh…

  33. Eric

    January 22nd, 2006 at 8:12 pm

    It seems pointless to use billmonk when I can just pay someone real money with TextPayMe…If only they had better debt tracking…

    At the end of the day, I got some money from my friend and I didn’t even need an account, pretty cool service.

  34. Ketan Kothari

    January 23rd, 2006 at 7:37 am

    I see this site using email id as a login id. A bad idea as people do change their email addresses. A more robust solution will be able to choose any name you want to use.

  35. Dave

    January 25th, 2006 at 9:52 am

    >

    Are you kidding? Do you have insurance, a bank account, credit card, apartment, house, or in a record club, a phone, electricity, or pay taxes? If you do you have a credit record. I don’t think you have to be concerned about “corporations” (are the quotes to make it seem sinister and evil?) somehow using a split dinner at Applebee’s to somehow steal your identity and ruin your life. Because of the informal nature of the service it wouldn’t be a data source your loan officer could use to deny you a loan to send your kids to college.

    As for me, I like the idea, especially being able to send stuff through the cellphone so I don’t have to try to remember each financial transaction made over a weekend trip with friends. I think it is a good option for those in college or young adults who tend to go out in large groups to restaurants and bars.

  36. kris

    February 13th, 2006 at 1:43 am

    Am I the only one who wonders how email spoofing will play into the sms game? I mean, couldn’t I just spoof someone else’s sms email address and start saying they owe me money?

  37. kris

    February 13th, 2006 at 1:45 am

    On second thought, I suppose its probably a bit more difficult than that because the emails probably come from specific sources so you would have to spoof all that(ips etc) to assuming bmonk checks that.

  38. f8k3r

    April 4th, 2006 at 9:56 pm

    Here’s a service I actually use, http://www.billhighway.com - its a similar site for managing shared bills for individuals, roommates and even groups. I started using it in college a few years back, then my alumni started using it to organize events and process payments for donations, golf outings, etc - now my roommates and I use it for splitting the bills. Its the first service like it to my knowledge, works good and the support is great!

  39. Fulerin

    November 8th, 2006 at 3:52 am

    I’m using http://mo.neytrack.in now, I think it’s more simple and efficient for the same purpose, more 2.0.

  40. Abbas

    December 7th, 2006 at 7:36 pm

    I have been using Buxfer (http://www.buxfer.com) and I find it quite convenient. The transaction entering interface is quite nifty and all JS - so, very fast. Also, it has a concept of groups where if A pays $10 to B, B pays $10 to C and if C pays $10 to A, the debts all cancel out automatically. It really reduces actual money transactions by quite a bit…

  41. Kyle Smith

    December 10th, 2006 at 10:01 pm

    I just stumbled onto BillMonk and I’m liking it for the non-monetary debt tracking. I’ve got a bunch of movies and books that people borrow and I have a hard time remembering who has what when. Especially with the book my students check out.

    I’d like to see them build on the library feature more. Perhaps making it categorizable by more than just media type. Anyone know of other personal inventory services out there for comparison?

  42. Earthquake

    January 30th, 2007 at 12:38 pm

    its been done! Payments and social money together! It may not be as obvious to some but KushCash (www.kushcash.com) already implimented this to its system and then some! It may be an addition to their service but I don’t think they are the first one!

  43. alex

    February 15th, 2007 at 10:36 am

    http://google.com

« Previous post
Next post »