Venmo is beginning to roll out receipt scanning, letting users upload a bill, assign individual items to diners and split tax and tip before sending payment requests—all without leaving the app. In a lunch test, Venmo read the receipt correctly and matched Splitwise’s calculations, though users still had to follow up to collect payment.
Receipt scan reads the bill correctly
The test used a lunch receipt from Blue Park Kitchen in New York City. After selecting “Scan Receipt” on Venmo’s “Pay/Request” screen and uploading the bill, the app correctly read the total. The tester said Tab, a bill-splitting app they had used for years, sometimes mistakes the date or check number for the amount due. Venmo did not make that error in this test. The tester had contacted Tab for comment but had not received a response by publication time.
Venmo allocates tax and tip by item
Once the receipt was recognized and the total confirmed, the user selected Dan and Grace as the people to request payment from, then assigned each dish to the person who ordered it. Grace and the tester had the seasonal special bowl, while Dan chose a build-your-own meal with extra protein, leaving him with a slightly higher subtotal. Venmo calculated each person’s share of tax and tip in proportion to their spending. The user could review the amounts before sending the requests.
The same receipt produced identical calculations when uploaded to Splitwise. But in this comparison, Splitwise did not offer Venmo’s option to request payment directly within the same app. Avoiding duplicate calculations and sending requests immediately are the clearest conveniences of Venmo’s feature.
Easier calculations do not guarantee faster payment
A Venmo survey of 5,000 U.S. respondents aged 18 to 22 found no single preferred way to split a group meal. Twenty percent preferred paying for what they ordered, 15% favored splitting the bill evenly, and 12% preferred taking turns paying or having different people cover different expenses. Itemizing a receipt may reduce friction over how to divide the total, but it cannot resolve disagreements about which method to use.
Collecting the money still depends on whether recipients see and respond to a request. In the test, Grace paid immediately. Dan paid only after the tester asked in person whether he had seen the notification. Receipt scanning can simplify the math and make it easier to send a request, but it does not ensure prompt payment or agreement on how the bill should be split.