One person in charge, everyone pays by card upfront into one place, and the whole group sees the record. The chase — Venmo requests, reminder texts, mental math — is what you're eliminating, and visibility is what eliminates it.
Person-to-person payments were built for paying one friend back, not collecting from eight. So collecting turns into eight separate requests, three "sorry just saw this," and one spreadsheet nobody else can see. The organizer becomes a bill collector for money that was everyone's idea.
Collecting is only half the job — the other half is what happens when money needs to leave. Someone drops out and wants their part back; a shared cost needs paying; the plan changes. On the record, that's simple: the person asks for the amount, the organizer approves it, and the whole group sees the money leave. Nothing moves without the organizer saying yes, and nothing moves in secret.
That's the piece a group chat and a stack of Venmo requests can never give you — a single trusted person deciding what leaves, with everyone watching the same record. No one has to trust a memory or take a screenshot as proof; the history is right there for anyone in the group to open.
Splitting apps track who owes whom after the money is spent. Collecting is the opposite: get the money in one place before it's spent, with one trusted person holding it. That's what TableCash is — a group fund with one person in charge, where Stripe moves and holds all the money and the app is the record.
Free on the App Store · 18+