The upside of friends, roommates, or family members sharing a multiline phone plan is everyone has a lower monthly bill. The downside, however, is one person is ultimately responsible for both paying that bill—and gathering what is owed to him or her from their friends each month.
AT&T is offering a new way to divvy things up, though. The carrier, on Thursday, will introduce AT&T SplitPay, which will individually bill people on select shared wireless plans. The service will be available immediately.
“College kids are Venmo-ing each other to share accounts,” says Erin Scarborough, AT&T’s President of Broadband & Connectivity Initiatives. “They’re having to calculate account charges per line and we’re taking that frustration out for them.”
AT&T says it is patenting the technology behind SplitPay, which has been in the works for over a year. While the company plans to restrict its use to its own cellular network initially, it is considering licensing the technology to other companies (that would, as an example, let people sharing a streaming service split the cost automatically).
SplitPay might make it easier for people to pay their share of a bill, but the primary account holder is still ultimately responsible for ensuring any financial obligations are met. Each person on the plan will get a text asking them to pay whatever their share of the bill is (including all fees). If they fail to do so, however, the primary account holder will receive a notification five days before the bill is due, letting them know who hasn’t yet paid.
If that person neglects to make a payment, the primary account holder will be charged and will have to recover the money from their friend (or family member) separately. SplitPay will allow for recurring payments as well, to minimize this scenario.
To sign up for the SplitPay service, AT&T account owners can log on to att.com/splitpay and assign a payor to each line.
Several companies, from Google to Airbnb, have tested out group payment methods in the past, but AT&T says the individual billing for a shared account is an industry first.
“Eighty-five percent of our customers have multiple line and we believe at least half of those are using split pay on their own in some form,” says Scarborough. “This is the first and only [payment system] of its kind in our industry. We’re happy to solve a pain point and solve it first.”
Login to add comment
Other posts in this group
While Tesla’s stock has seen a sharp decline in recent weeks, Elon Musk has quietly been working to expand his influence in a different area of tech: AI supercomputing. Recent reports have reveale
A New York-based AI startup called Hebbia says it’s developed techniques that let AI answer questions about massive amounts of data without merely regur
Have you ever wanted to sign up for an online service but you didn’t want to provide your real email address as part of the process?
There’s a good chance your email address has
Did everyone get the Microsoft 365 rate-hike notice? The personal plan is going from $70 a year to $100 a year.
Few apps are as inextricably linked to the iPhone as Apple’s Messages. Introduced with the original iPhone almost 18 years ago, the app (then called “Text”) has become the primar
Elon Musk said on Friday that his xAI has acquired X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter, in an all-stock transaction for $45 billion, including $12 billion in debt.
“x
There’s a reason Haliey Welch seemingly vanished from the internet overnight: S
