A new kind of bill-splitting app
BillBob, a new mobile-first bill-splitting app, has launched with a clear mission: remove the maths, the friction, and the awkwardness from splitting costs with friends. Powered by AI from inception to execution, BillBob lets users scan a receipt, allocate items to each person in a few taps, and collect payments via secure, instant peer‑to‑peer transfers. Unlike legacy tools, only one person in the group needs the app; everyone else simply scans a QR code or taps a shareable link to see what they owe and pay immediately.
For founder and director Oscar Brown, BillBob is a product born directly from lived experience. “I built BillBob because I was always that friend with the calculator at the end of the night,” he says. “The pressure of that situation is real, and it’s turning moments of joy into moments of stress. I wanted to make it so easy to split receipts fairly that money stops being the awkward part of friendship.”
The rise of ‘friendflation’
BillBob arrives at a time when socialising has become noticeably more expensive, especially for Gen Z and younger millennials. The term “friendflation” has emerged to describe the rising, often hidden cost of maintaining friendships through dinners, destination weekends, and group events. A 2025 survey of nearly 1,000 people found that 79% feel financial anxiety when hanging out with friends, underlining how quickly these “little” expenses add up. Hen and stag celebrations in the UK now average £779 per person, with some destination trips easily topping £1,200, while even a casual coffee can approach £5.
Against that backdrop, the sentiment that socialising comes at too great a cost has become concerningly common. Brown’s bet is that technology can lower the emotional and administrative cost of staying connected. By making every split transparent, precise, and almost instant, BillBob aims to remove one of the biggest points of friction in modern friendship: who pays what, and when.
Challenging legacy incumbents
For more than a decade, one expense‑sharing app has dominated the bill‑splitting space. Originally designed for basic expense tracking, it now reflects a very different era of product thinking: subscription-based paywalls on core features, in‑app advertising, and a requirement that every participant downloads the app and creates an account. That creates maximum friction at exactly the wrong moment, when a group just wants to settle up and move on.
This shift has left many users frustrated and actively searching for alternatives that feel more aligned with how they live today. BillBob is designed as that alternative: scan, split, pay. It rejects the assumption that everyone must adopt the same tool and instead focuses on the one person who already organises the booking, the plan, and the payment. For them, BillBob promises to be a Swiss army knife, handling the scanning, the maths, and the collection while friends simply tap a link and pay.
How BillBob works: scan, split, pay
At the heart of BillBob is a deliberately simple three‑step flow:
- Scan: The organiser photographs the receipt. BillBob’s AI instantly extracts items, prices, and key details like service charges, removing the need for manual entry.
- Split: Each item is assigned to specific people in the group, or shared where needed. With a tap of “Split”, the app handles all the calculations—no spreadsheets, no mental arithmetic, no back‑of‑the‑napkin scribbles.
- Pay: BillBob generates a unique QR code or shareable link. Friends don’t need the app to participate; they follow the link, select their name from a branded identification screen, and pay their exact share via secure, instant transfers.
Crucially, the scanning, splitting, calculation, and sharing experience is completely free to use. BillBob only charges a 3% platform fee when users choose to settle up using the app’s integrated payment flow. Payments land instantly, and cross‑currency functionality is built in from day one to support users who travel frequently and maintain friendships across borders. Transparency is intentional: the business model is clear, and there are no hidden fees tucked behind unexpected in-app purchases.
A new type of founder
BillBob is not just an AI‑powered product. It is also an example of AI as a founding partner. Brown used AI tools to help architect, prototype, and iterate the app, relying on a “vibe coding” approach where he guided the system with prompts to shape the codebase and logic over six months.
“The barrier to entry for tech founders has collapsed,” he explains. “Five years ago, I would have needed to hire a CTO or spend two years teaching myself to code. AI has democratised app development. It’s about access to innovation and a rebellion against the idea that only a certain kind of Silicon Valley founder can build something valuable.”
That story sits within a wider shift. A growing share of no‑code and AI‑assisted app builders report having no prior coding experience, and the AI-in‑fintech market is forecast to grow dramatically over the next five years. BillBob embodies both trends: AI as an accelerant for solo or small‑team founders, and AI as a baked‑in feature that delivers tangible value to end users in the form of accurate, real‑time receipt parsing.
Built for how people actually split
From product decisions to pricing, BillBob is consciously aligned with how younger consumers already handle money and technology. It is mobile‑first, lightweight, and designed to be used in the moment, at the table, not as a complex ledger to reconcile later. Only one person needs to commit to the app; everyone else remains in their existing payment habits while still benefiting from a cleaner, fairer split.
The bet is simple: if bill‑splitting can be reduced to a 30‑second interaction, then the stress that currently surrounds “who owes what?” will gradually fade into the background. For BillBob, success looks fairly unglamorous: a future where no one dreads the arrival of the bill because the admin is already under control.
