This morning Splitwise, a Providence, Rhode Island-based startup announced that it had closed on the $20 million series A. The company creates consumer fintech software that helps users split costs. But Splitwise is not a Venmo or Paytm clone. Instead of giving users money to their friends; the company leaves the transfer of money to others.
Splitwise simply means that money puts pressure on all kinds of relationships and wants to help reduce awkwardness, CEO John Bittner told TechCrunch in an interview. Roommates, partners, married couples with separate orthopedics, or just friends on a skiing trip all have to deal with shared expenses. And the zero fun of looking cut costs for your friend or wife or roomie. Splitwise’s software makes it easy to track and come to terms with shared costs.
It wants to keep these costs open and the app debts clean so that people don’t have to travel on top of each other when it comes to money. The product concept has found a global audience. According to Bittner, Splitwise has attracted millions of registered users who accounted for $90 billion since 2011. The startup refused to share the number of active users, but because it was only raised in a series, we made it the first, gave way – stage passes on more concrete use metrics.
Since Splitwise leaves the transfer of money between its users to others, it does not charge transaction fees or monetized customer funds. So how is cash? Users charge $3 per month for its Pro service. Or more simply, Splitwise offers users a subscription that requires more robust cost-sharing software. We lack metrics to explain how Splitwise’s subscriptions look user-based, but Bittner said measuring Splitwise’s free user base doesn’t reduce the company’s free-to-pay conversion rate.
We can, however, assume that the insight partners were willing to lead the company to invest $20 million in the company, so the number of its paid customers is growing at least a reasonable clip. Earlier in the series, Bittner told TechCrunch that his company had raised about $9 million. Splitwise has long been biologically grown. Since it was able to attract new users without the cost of paying, it kept its costs low. This means that there is no need to raise capital at the same pace as some other consumer fintech companies. However, keeping its fundraising to minimum, companies had to be a little more careful where their resources were shown.
