While we all know that planning a vacation is a massive chore but an even bigger nuisance comes after the trip has been completed. You then need to nag everyone to fess up their fair share for the vacation because all your funds were blocked in booking the trip. It seems Airbnb, the biggest home rental startup, finally decided it was time to give travelers what they require most — split payments feature.
First spotted by The Next Web, Airbnb has started testing a payment splitting feature right within its application. This brings along the capability to split the payment for your reservation among the group, with up to 16 individuals beforehand.
Starting today, Airbnb has decided to initiate a pilot for the payment splitting feature with only a small group of homes listed on its rental platform. The feature has been built upon the flexible payments infrastructure that was debuted by the company way back in April this year. It enables you to split your reservation amount and book the accommodation by paying part of the amount upfront.
The group payment splitting feature will enable you to divide the amount and pay your share up front to book the rental space. All others in your travel group will have only three days to shell out their share, else you’ll have to settle the remaining amount to keep the booking intact.
Speaking about the payment splitting feature, which is expected to roll out widely later this year, an Airbnb spokesperson said:
We’re currently testing a way to split the cost of a trip on the Airbnb platform. This is a small, initial pilot — our goal is to make it even easier to use Airbnb to travel with friends and family.
Also, if you didn’t know, the payment split feature has been one of the most requested by users of the home rental platform. They’ve suggested the addition of the same to the platform when Airbnb Chief Executive Brian Chesky inquired about the feature wishlist at New Year’s.
This resulted in Airbnb buying out a major payments company earlier this year, Tilt. The transaction was valued at tens of millions of dollars and it was more of an acqui-hire, as stated by several reports. Airbnb agreed to acquire all of their assets, including most of the core team of the social payments company.
This feature will not only be helpful in splitting payments for receiving back your investment in booking the rental space. Instead, it will also enable you to split the reservation amount beforehand to book expensive and more lavish homes, something that might be outside the credit limit of just one individual.
