Splitwise

“Ever had that awkward moment trying to split bills with friends after a trip or dinner? Splitwise makes it easy to track who paid for what and who owes whom - no spreadsheets, no arguments."

Splitwise is a product that helps in managing shared expenses among friends, family or other groups. It keeps track of all the shared expenses - from rent and household bills to dining or travel costs - so everyone is aware of their fair share without manual calculations.

Core Value Proposition

"Manage your shared group expenses and split costs effortlessly."

It lets friends, roommates, or trip buddies track and settle who owes whom - without needing to do the math or remember who paid for what.

User Experience

A user experiences Splitwise’s core value proposition the moment they stop worrying about “who owes what” in their group and let the app handle it for them. Here's how:

User experiences the CVP when splitwise balances the expenses and simplify the repayments after adding the shared expenses in their groups.

Active User

An active user is someone who:

• Adds at least 1 expense or settles a payment in a month.
• Belongs to at least 1 group with ongoing expense activity.

Natural Frequency

• Casual users: Use 2-3 times per year (mostly for trips or weddings)
• Core users: Use 1-2 times/month (Outing with friends, group subscriptions etc.)
• Power users: Use 3-5 times/week (couples, flatmates, daily shared expenses)

Engagement Framework

Splitwise’s engagement focus is on habit-building, where frequency measure like number of expense entries per week is one of the important metric to track, as more entires/splits equals to more stickiness. Also, measures like number of active groups can be used to track longer engagement, as users who manage multiple groups tend to stay longer.

For personalizing engagement campaigns, it is important to tag or group the customers into specific customer segments for splitwise. It will help in boosting to customer loyalty and conversions. Let's look into few types of segmentations.

1. User characteristics based segmentation

Ideal Customer Profiles

From the user calls of individuals from diverse backgrounds, age groups, and professions, I gathered valuable insights on their characteristics.

ICP Prioritization

Customer segments to target based on user characteristics

1. Young Professional (Flatmate) - ICP 1

• Lives in urban shared flats, frequently splits rent, bills, and outing expenses.
• Uses Splitwise 2–3 times a week to keep things smooth with flatmates.
• Prioritizes simplicity and clarity, avoids roommate tension.
• High potential to influence peers and onboard others.

2. Student (Hostel) - ICP 2

• Tracks frequent low-value transactions - snacks, travel, groceries, etc.
• Super active in weekly use but less likely to pay for Pro.
• Early tech adopter, ideal for organic growth and word-of-mouth.

Additional information regarding demographics based on other researches

2. Usage based segmentation

Users come to Splitwise for different reasons - some use it just for trips, others for daily expenses. Engagement campaigns have to be formulated for helping casual users become core users, and core users become loyal ones by making their experience smoother and more valuable.

3. RFM Grid

Every segment needs a different kind of attention - welcoming new users, rewarding loyal ones, and gently nudging those who might drift away. With the right messages and timing, we can keep users engaged and make Splitwise a habit they stick with.

Product Hook: Smart Split & Settle

Smart Split & Settle is a new Splitwise feature that acts like a personal expense assistant. It automatically prompts users to add entries of new shared expenses and enables one-tap UPI payments to settle up from context. Based on the user's context, whether it is from calendar, maps or time, splitwise will notify the user to update the entries for the event with a personalized message. This feature will also gently nudge user about any pending expense you owe, making the process easier.

Engagement campaigns

To ensure this new product hook succeeds, 5 engagement campaigns are created to targeting different user segments.

Campaign 1

Segmentation: Young Working Professionals in Shared Apartments - ICP 1

Goal of the Campaign: Convert power flatmate users into Pro users and increase usage of Smart Split hook

Pitch: "Rent, bills, groceries - Splitwise just got smarter. Use Smart Split to track your shared life without the awkward conversations"

Offer: 7-day Pro trial with access to Smart Split

Frequency and Timing: Triggered one week before month-end (salary time) via email + app notification

Success Metrics:

• Pro feature usage
• % of flatmate groups using recurring Smart Split

Campaign 2

Segmentation: College Students Living in Hostels - ICP 2

Goal of the Campaign: Help students manage frequent shared spending easily and build a habit of logging every small transactions

Pitch: “Why argue over ₹30 Maggi again? Smart Split reminds who paid and makes it fair, every time.”

Offer: Chance to win ₹100 Flipkart voucher after completing 4 entries/week through smart splits for 2 weeks

Frequency and Timing: Weekly push every Sunday (to log weekend snack/dining/outing spends) - in-app popup

Success Metrics:

• Increase in entries
• D7 usage from new student signups
• Number of Smart Split and settle usage

Campaign 3,4,5

Next 3 campaigns are focused on usage based user segments - to move Casual users to Core users and Core users to Power users, and to improve the usage of power users.

Retention Rate

Lets look at the industry standards for personal finance to estimate retention performance. These benchmarks give an idea of how many users stick around after key time intervals.

• D1 retention - On average, only about 22–25% of users remain active one day after installing a finance app​. Finance apps actually rank among the higher day-1 retention categories – one analysis found 22.7% D1 retention for finance apps, slightly above the ~25% cross-industry average​. This implies Splitwise’s Day-1 retention likely falls in the 20–25% range as well, roughly around one fourth of users stays after first day of sign up.
• D7 retention - There is a steep drop-off in the first week. Fintech apps can vary; one study by CleverTap noted 73% of new fintech app users churn within 7 days. However, that higher week-1 retention likely applies to apps like banking or stock trading. For an expense-splitting app, a reasonable D7 retention might be around 10–20%.
• D30 Retention - After on month of usage, retention typically gets stabilized to a small percentage of users. Industry benchmarks show 5-6% of users retained by day 30 for finance related applications. In other words, only 1 in 20 new users are still active a month after signup on average. In Splitwise’s case, usage is often event-driven, so traditional monthly retention metrics can be tricky to interpret. Many users appear to churn after their immediate use-case ends, but may return months later when another need arises.

Overall, compared to other industries, early churn rate os very high for consumer fintech apps. From the user calls, it was found that after the initial drop-off, the remaining users are usually the loyal ones who continue to use splitwise app over longer periods.

Sources

• https://getstream.io/blog/app-retention-guide/
• medium

The retention curve for personal finance apps like Splitwise is usually steeply downward-sloping. From the findings, few of the insights obtained are:

• Massive Early Drop-Off - For Splitwise, some users might install it to settle a one-off outing and then abandon it. The goal is to improve the Day 1 and Week 1 retention by delivering an “aha moment” quickly (e.g. showing how easy it is to split bills) so that more users stick around beyond the first use.
• Loyal users - By Day 30 the curve flattens, indicating the app has likely found its dedicated users. That 5-6% who remain after a month are typically the ones using the app regularly (for example, roommates continuously splitting expenses - ICP 1, or friend groups - ICP 2, who use Splitwise for every shared activity). After this point, retention might stabilize - these users could continue for months or years.
• Re-Engagement - Some of the users might come back to the app when the user is been added to anew group, or reminded if an unsettled balance. They may also come back during events where lots of expense splitting is required. Strategic re-engagement campaigns should be introduced to bring these set of users back to active state.

Splitwise's User friendly interface, real time updates, multiple currency support, expense tracking and charts, Group tracking & history are few of the features that drive retention. Re-engagement campaigns should focus on introducing users to these features and highlight the benefits of using them. For aligning these campaigns with the right user segment, we should first identify the reason why the user stooped using the application.

Key Reasons for User Churn

Based on the user calls, internet research and app reviews, few of the main reasons for user churn identified are

Voluntary

• Friends don’t use Splitwise - If others aren’t on the app, users don’t see a point in using it alone.
• Daily limit and wait time (free version) – Users are annoyed with restrictions like waiting 10 secs or not being able to log more expenses per day, and don’t want to upgrade.
• No auto reminders – Splitwise doesn’t remind friends to pay, so users feel awkward asking them directly.
• Debt simplification is annoying – Sometime, debt simplifications make you receive payment, or pay up to a person you are not close with, which is frustrating.
• Bad customer support - Many users reviews mention regrading the lack of proper customer support.
• Shifted to other apps – People move to UPI or wallets like PhonePe that let them split and pay instantly - lack of integration.
• Used only for one-time trip or event – After the event ends, there’s no reason to keep using it.

Involuntary

• Don’t hang out with friends like before – Lifestyle change means fewer outings = fewer shared expenses.
• Got married / living with family – No need to split expenses anymore, so app becomes irrelevant.
• Moved to a place where no one uses it - people tend to pay their share during the expense than sharing.
• Old balances not closed – Pending dues from old trips keep showing up, which feels messy and annoying.

Negative actions to watch for

• Recency of adding a new expense - Check if user stopped making new entries for over 7-10 days
• Retention measures like D7 and D30.
• Frequently hits Pro limits but refuses to upgrade
• Activity in the app - measure % of users only opens app but doesn’t do anything
• Similar complaints in app reviews
• Uninstall rates
• NPS score - Lower NPS score means lower recommendation of the app among friends - low retention

Resurrection Campaigns

Splitwise makes splitting expenses effortless — try it out and let me know how it helps you! 💸✨