One of the best things about Airbnb is that it lets you book entire apartments and homes (and castles and boats!), which is really handy if you’re traveling with large groups of friends. The only downside is that, until now, one person had to pay for the whole whack and get reimbursed by the other members of the party.
But now Airbnb has rolled out globally a bill-splitting feature. Here’s how it works: the trip organizer will make a booking for a property that accepts split payments. Their credit card will then be charged for their portion of the stay. The other members of the party then have 72 hours to pay their share. Reservations can be split across 16 people.
Airbnb began trialling this feature earlier this year, and is likely the product of the acquisition of social payments startup Tilt.
Split payments have been at the top of Airbnb users’ wish lists for a long time now, and is long-overdue. And it can mean that trip organizers aren’t left out of pocket if someone decides to stiff them, or have to deal with exchanging bank and paypal details to get reimbursed.
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