Burrito

Burrito: A Billing-Splitting App

Framing the Problem

Splitting Bills and having shared expenses is often stressful, confusing and sometimes even awkward. Whether it's dividing dinner costs, rent, or trip expenses, people find it difficult to track who owes what, handling partial payments, how the bill is split (50-50 or paying individual amounts), or even reminding friends to pay.

This process often causes social tensions, financial confusion, and emotional discomfort, especially in large and diverse friend groups where spending habits vary.
Splitting shared expenses should be fair, transparent, and even fun but currently it is stressful, awkward, and dull.

Don't take our word for it, according to the Venmo Survey in 2023, 72% of people in shared living arrangements say money causes friction in their relationships. According to YouGov in 2022, 58% of users forget or delay repayments even when they can afford it. With one of the largest user groups being Gen Z, according to statistics 67% engage more with apps that value transparency and gamified design.

There are a few user groups that find this a real problem, and it is important to identify the key pain points to solve them accurately. Students and young adults hate asking friends to pay back, they lose track of shared costs or feel awkward if they spend differently.
Similarly, housemates and couples struggle to stay organised and fairly distribute recurring expenses, such as rent. Friend/Travel groups face confusion over uneven contributions. Finally, people who dislike handling money conversations, since they may have anxiety about their financial situations and expressing that to others.

Idea Explanation

Burrito is a gamified bill-splitting app that transforms the dull, awkward process of splitting and settling expenses into a fun, social experience. It combines play, accountability, and friendly competition to make paying back, fast and enjoyable. The app’s North Star Metrics is: Increase the % of payments completed within 24 hours.

Example User Flow (friends at dinner):

Before the meal:

·        A group of friends join a virtual room using a short code, like joining a Slido.io poll.

·        Each person guesses the total bill before the meal starts (7-minute timer).

·        The person whose guess is furthest off becomes the “Initial Payer” who covers the total bill first.

. This is totally optional; if a friend wants to be the "Initial Payer" then Burrito provides them the option to do this.

After the meal:

·        The initial payer (e.g., Kate) enters the total amount (£150) into Burrito and uploads the receipt.

·        She selects her friends and chooses between equal or custom splits.

·        She sets the payment timer (default: 24h).

·        The countdown begins and friends are notified instantly.

Features:

·        Payback Gamification: Each friend sees their average payment time ( e.g.: “your average: 24h 6m)

·        A challenge prompt like: “Pay now to bring it down to 12h 3m!”

·        Upon payment: Confetti fills the screen and their new average payment time updates.

·        If someone misses the 24-hour window, they receive a warning notification like, “Cindy, you’re the only one left to pay! 4 hours left to avoid the Donkey of Shame!”

·        If still unpaid, their profile is branded with the “Donkey of Shame” badge for 30 days.

·        This creates light social pressure, which is funny and motivating

How burrito fixes the problem:

Implementation

How do all the pieces fit together? Does your frontend make requests to your backend? Where does your database fit in?

We implemented a frontend site. The technologies that we used were ReactJS, TailwindCSS and DaisyUI library.

We also used Figma to create wireframes to showcase the user flow according to different scenarios and create clear and beautiful user interfaces.

Challenges

•     Having only 2 engineers on the team was difficult especially with the tight timeframe. So we addressed by prioritising key features such as “Donkey of shame” and “confetti reward” etc.

• In the app, balancing fun with financial responsibility. It was difficult to ensure the app was fun and gamified but not taking away the core features and reason for the app

•   Designing Effective gamification without making it too cluttered or confusing. We aim to make Burrito as simple and seamless as possible for all types of stakeholders.

•   Encouraging consistent engagement since many finance apps suffer from low retention after initial use. We addressed with gamification to make it interactive.

Accomplishments

• Defined a clear North Star Metric: Established "Payments completed within X hours" as the app's primary success metric.

• Validated the importance of gamification in a finance app: Learned how gamification can be used for retention and successful metrics in financial apps. Light hearted competition helps overcome social awkwardness around money.

• Improved team collaboration and communication : worked cross functionally across design, product and technical roles under time pressure, by delegating task effectively.

• This app is completely scalable with potential for future growth such as partner monetisation (restaurant partnerships etc.) , open banking APIs etc

Next Steps

• Move from a simulated payment flow to real in-app transactions by integrating open banking APIs to enable secure, one-click payments.

• Expand gamification by rewarding consistency of the app usage: this could be by introducing seasonal challenges and weakly streaks.

• Use AI to recommend optimal or fair bill splits automatically: This can be done by analysing past behaviour and typical spending patterns to suggest fair contributions. This reduces manual inputs and arguments.