SnapSplit
A fintech app redesign that eliminated the most frustrating part of group payments.
Role
UX/UI Designer
Team
1 Developer
1 PM
Time
6 weeks
Tools
UserTesting
Figma
Lovable
Overview
Context
We've all been there—dinner ends, the check comes, and suddenly everyone's calculating who owes what. "I had the salad," "Did we split the appetizer?" It gets messy fast.
That's where Snapsplit comes in. This fintech platform lets you scan receipts and create shareable links to split bills among friends. The scanning part worked great—people loved how easy it was to upload their receipt and see all the items extracted automatically.
But then users hit a wall. Bill hosts were getting stuck doing all the work, and we started seeing people abandon the process entirely.
So we set out to fix it. How might we make splitting bills feel as easy as the actual dinner?
Result
Task completion increased by 60% - users actually finished splitting their bills.
People could now assign their own items instead of waiting for the host to do everything. The new experience eliminated the bottleneck that was frustrating everyone.
Hopefully now splitting the check feels as natural as sharing the meal itself.
Meet our bill splitter
Our main user was pretty straightforward: young adults who go out to eat together and need to split the check without turning it into a group math session.
Think friend groups splitting dinner, roommates dividing groceries, travel buddies sharing trip costs. These are people who want to pay their share and get back to having fun, not spend ten minutes after dinner doing calculations.
Traits
We identified three key things about how these users actually behave:
Users are busy. They don't want to spend 10 minutes after dinner doing math and assigning items when they just want to pay and go home.
Bill hosts get stuck with all the work. The person who offered to "handle the bill" ended up doing manual labor while everyone else waited, creating awkward group dynamics.
They need to trust the platform. While the app doesn't handle money directly, people need to feel confident about entering payment information and sharing financial details with friends.
Objectives
From understanding actual bill splitter behavior, we knew the experience needed to be:
Fast and effortless. It should take less time than doing mental math, and anyone should be able to use it without reading instructions.
Fairly distributed. The workload shouldn't fall entirely on one person—everyone should participate in the process.
Trustworthy. The design should feel secure and professional enough that people feel comfortable with their financial information.
The real work happened as a team
I want to be clear—this wasn't a solo design hero story. Much of the creative process came from conversations with the wider team and feedback from frustrated users who were abandoning the platform.
The redesign is a culmination of everyone's ideas, user research insights, and iteration based on real usage data. From user interviews to prototyping in Figma to building out the design system, the whole team was involved in making this experience enjoyable and effective.
From user interviews to Figma prototypes to building our design system on the fly, the whole team was constantly iterating and improving the experience together.
Bill splitting flow
We redesigned the process around four main stages. Each part was designed for a specific reason based on what we learned from users. Here's the why behind the how:
1. Receipt upload
Users begin by either scanning their receipt or manually entering items. As items get added, the interface shows a running total and number of items to split.
While the scanning tech was already solid, we improved the visual feedback so users knew the system was processing correctly. No more wondering "did it work?" moments.
2. Item review
Next, users can review and edit the extracted items before splitting begins. Remove tips, adjust prices, add items the scanner missed—whatever they need.
This step builds trust by letting people verify everything's correct before involving money. We learned that control over accuracy was crucial for user confidence.
3. Group assignment (aka the game changer)
Here's where we made the biggest change. Instead of the bill host assigning every item to every person, we flipped it: each group member gets a link and selects their own items.
The host just reviews and confirms. This distributed the cognitive load and made the process feel collaborative instead of burdensome. No more "wait, who had the extra guac?" confusion.
4. Payment & tracking
Finally, everyone pays their portion directly through the app, and the system tracks who's paid and who hasn't. Clear visual status indicators meant no more awkward follow-up texts asking "did you pay yet?"
Everyone can see the status in real-time, so there's transparency without the nagging.
Prototyping
Check out this prototype to see the new flow in action - designed to be faster, more collaborative, and less stressful for everyone involved.
Testing
After 6 weeks of iteration, internal testing, and late-night design system builds, the redesigned SnapSplit was ready to launch. The feedback from our startup team and their friends made all the work worth it:
"Finally! I don't feel like I'm doing everyone's homework when we split the bill."
"This actually makes splitting bills fun instead of awkward."
Sometimes we get so caught up in the technical details that we forget about the human impact. This project reminded me how important it is to design for not only functionality, but feeling. Those moments of genuine relief and satisfaction from users? That's exactly why I love doing this work.
Shoutout
Before wrapping up, I have to give credit to the rest of the SnapSplit team. Working with ambitious, creative, and talented people really brought this redesign to life.
In a startup environment, you move fast and wear multiple hats—it's rare to be encouraged to completely rethink core assumptions and design bravely. The fact that we could question fundamental workflows and rebuild from the ground up? That takes a special team.
Kudos to everyone who made this happen.
