Kin

What it does

Kin is a beautiful, simple expense sharing app. Created by Christo Davel, the brain behind both 20Twenty and 22 Seven, the app makes it easy for you to track and share expenses with people in your life.

All expenses are shared between groups of people (called “kins”) with a specific purpose (e.g. trip up the coast or monthly groceries). The app makes it exceptionally quick and easy to add expenses to a kin, and to split those costs as they’re being added (if someone drinks four beers instead of two, for example). 

Once the kin comes to an end (for example you get back from your trip), you can quickly settle your expenses. Kin even allows you to add your credit card and bank details to both pay and receive money via the app.

How it helps

Money can be an awkward topic – even more with people you care about. Your favourite friend may also be hopelessly forgetful about paying you back, while you’re anxiously keeping a tally in your head and becoming more frustrated by the day. There are some people who insist on splitting a restaurant bill exactly, and other people who hate the very idea. Kin wants to keep both sets of people happy and, for the most part, it succeeds.

By putting all the stress of managing shared expenses in a kin, it becomes a lot less awkward to talk about the subject. If anyone feels they owe too much, they can see exactly where all the money was spent. It’s pretty easy to forget about the petrol that you promised to share, or that second round of pizzas you ordered when everyone had had too much to drink. There’s even a gentle reminder system, which saves you sending awkward WhatsApp to your dozy bestie. 

Allowing the app to settle the bills for you is also really handy. You can just click the button and know you’re sorted. No fiddling with EFTs.

Conclusion

Kin is a really useful and beautiful little tool with a lot of room to grow. It makes splitting expenses into something you don’t even think about after you’ve set up a kin – it just does its thing and you don’t have to worry until the end. The only downside is convincing friends to download yet another app, but they will soon be hooked on the sheer usefulness of Kin.

What other users say

Where have you been all my (adult) life? Really, really, really helpful for things I do with friends and family on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Very excited to see where how this app evolves! – Alex Forsy

What the experts say

“The ease of making transaction mitigates possible social awkwardness and consequent financial risks. The Chinese participants specifically mentioned that it used to be a pain chasing after friends for bill splitting and sometimes they simply give up. Now the bill splitting function of WeChat Pay makes the process much easier and more pleasant. The improved commitment to exchange process can generate positive effect towards the other parties involved.” – Towards Understanding the Adoption and Social Experience of Digital Wallet Systems; Shiliang Tang, Ziming Wu, Xinyi Zhang, Gang Wang, Xiaojuan Ma, Haitao Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao