Millennial-focused fintech Groupee is pioneering the social payments landscape, introducing a world-first, real-time payment app that allows groups of people to instantly share the cost of any purchase, anytime and anywhere that accepts Visa tap-and-go payments.
It is free to join and includes innovative features to make paying together effortless.
Capitalising on the growing experience economy, in 30 seconds or less, Groupee users can pay for anything from coffee rounds, dinners out or concert tickets, to shared living expenses and group gifts, via the use of an instantly-issued Groupee Prepaid Visa Debit card - a virtual card that is stored in their smartphone digital wallet which can be used for payments in person or online.
Initially launched in 2016 as a restaurant bill-splitting app, the new Groupee platform is a completely fresh iteration which solves the hindrance of paying with others far beyond the restaurant table. Groupee has developed a brand-new category in the payments space, issuing reloadable prepaid Visa Debit cards to users as the principal tool to make group purchases possible and uncomplicated, rather than the traditional peer-to-peer (P2P) products where money is transferred between parties either before or after the main transaction occurs.
The new Groupee platform is the brainchild of millennial entrepreneur Jarred Baker, who with his team, has spent the past 18 months refining the technology and transforming its original model by removing the need to register specific merchants - unlike other players in the market that restrict use to participating merchants in specific payment categories.
Jarred Baker, founder and CEO of Groupee, said, “Paying with others is a fact of life in 2019 and is almost always a mess. My team and I have built Groupee because we have experienced the pain of the problem that it solves every day. My whole life is about sharing experiences with the people around me, but that doesn’t mean I want to be out of pocket to pay for them.
“We are passionate about improving the way people spend their own money. What makes Groupee’s ‘pay-share’ philosophy great is that you use Groupee in the moment. There are no delays, no paybacks, no transferring money between bank accounts, and no more chasing money from friends,” continued Baker.
The second-generation Groupee offering is compelling in-market on several fronts:
- Groupee provisions a card to the digital wallet of any smartphone to enable users to pay absolutely anywhere;
- It is the only product which is both device and card agnostic (if you have any smartphone and an Australian bank card, you can use Groupee);
- Groupee accepts Visa and Mastercard credit and debit cards, as well as American Express, as user-funding sources for the app; and
- Although not created or owned by any bank or financial institution, Groupee employs bank-level security features.
Groupee has identified the potential for the ‘pay-share’ market in Australia exceeds AU$100 billion per year and believes that millennial consumers will be the natural adopters of the app. According to Baker, Groupee is designed for anyone to use, particularly those considered the ‘alphas’ in a group who take leadership in planning and paying for group events.