Money for groups that moves as easily as a group chat. Every trip, flatshare, club and family pools money in one shared pot, every receipt reads itself, and nobody ever chases anybody for cash again.
2. Why people can't resist it
Relief from the awkward ask. The app does the chasing, so friendships stay friendly.
Fairness you can see. Dev never pays for wine he did not drink. Visible fairness is addictive, and people tell others about it.
The recap is a trophy. An end-of-trip story with the priciest meal and the kilometres travelled is something you post the same night.
3. How it works for real
Login: email or phone, a passkey-secured smart wallet is created behind the scenes (Coinbase Smart Wallet, Privy or Dynamic). No seed phrase, no gas: a paymaster sponsors every transaction on Base.
Pot: a shared smart account (Safe-style module) holding USDC on Base. Each member is a signer with spend limits set by trip rules.
Top up: local on-ramps (cards, Pix in Brazil, UPI in India, Interac in Canada, Faster Payments in the UK) convert home currency to USDC.
Snap receipt: a vision model (Gemini 2.5 Flash or GPT-4o mini via OpenRouter) extracts merchant, line items, currency, tax and tip as JSON. A fast cheap model (DeepSeek or Gemini Flash Lite) classifies items: food, alcohol, transport.
Split: a deterministic rules engine (not the LLM) applies the trip rules and computes shares in USDC. A frontier LLM like Claude writes the friendly summaries and the recap story.
Pay: a pot debit card (Visa via a stablecoin card issuer) spends in EUR or MAD at the till; each debit is logged on Base. x402 lets partner apps (ride hailing, bookings) charge the pot per request.
Settle: USDC transfers between members are instant and free; off-ramps pay out to local banks in each person's own currency.
4. Cost per use
Receipt parse: about $0.002 to $0.01. Recap story text: about $0.01. Gas: about $0.001 per transfer on Base, sponsored. A whole 6-day trip costs well under $0.50 to run.
Free: one active pot, unlimited receipts, settle-up. Paid ($3.99 per trip or $29 per year): multiple pots, pot debit card, animated recap video (8 seconds of a cheap video model like Wan at about $0.10 per second, so about $0.80, only on paid), and flatshare autopay. Revenue also comes from FX spread on card spend and on-ramp partner fees.
5. Growth loop
One person creates a pot and invites 3 to 8 friends who must install to top up. Each recap story is shared to group chats and stories with a "Start your own pot" link. Every friend who joins becomes the organiser of their next trip or flatshare.
6. Risks and guardrails
Money handling: use licensed partners for on and off ramps and the card; KYC at top up thresholds; no custody by Trip Pot itself.
Wrong splits: the AI only proposes; every split is editable and members can dispute a line within 48 hours.
Privacy: receipt photos are processed then deleted; only line items are kept, and the pot is visible only to members.
Abuse: spend limits per member, two-member approval above a threshold, freeze button for lost phones.
7. MVP build order
Email login with a smart wallet on Base Sepolia, create a pot, invite by link.
Top up with test USDC and a simple balances screen.
Receipt photo to JSON with a vision model, tap-to-assign items.
Rules engine (exclusions, upfront payers) and settle-up transfers.