Circle Pay
An app dedicated to shared expenses with friends, partners and roommates. Romanticizing and socializing payments between friends as a shared memory rather than a chore.
Circle Pay is a concept for sharing everyday expenses with the people closest to you. The app shifts the experience from a transactional "invoice" to a collaborative "shared memory," closer to Beli or Strava than a bill: you post the activity that needed the money, and the payment rides along with it.
What people need
- Share frequent, daily expenses with others
- Track and manage those costs clearly
- Minimize awkward interactions and tension throughout the payment experience
- Pay and request money easily
- Track money coming in and going out, daily, weekly and monthly
- Track specific financial relationships
The competitive analysis looked at Venmo, Cash App, Wise, Cleo AI, Marcus by Goldman Sachs, Oportun and ElevenLabs' AI voice notes.
The structure
User flow
- Home: your spend by day, week or month, automated payments, upcoming payments and recent activity.
- Feed: recent transactions as a social feed between friends, easy to follow.
- Your circle: the people you most often share expenses with.
- Profile: payment methods, connected bank, privacy, tax forms and notifications.
Design ideas
A shared memory, not an invoice
Send a personalized note or a photo when requesting money, and connect through imagery instead of line items.
Automate the split
Automate monthly expenses and split payments, and recommend payments based on past transactions.
Reminders that aren't personal
Request reminders are automated only, so when someone sees a reminder they know it wasn't pushed by a friend.
Fixed costs vs fun costs
Split spending into fixed costs and fun costs, with automated payments for the fixed ones at the top of home.
Circular by design
Pull on the thread of the circle: it should feel like this is all going to come back around.
Your circle, Notifications, Profile
- Your circle shows who your ecosystem includes, and who owes whom.
- Notifications bring payments, reminders and auto-tagged charges into one list.
- Profile holds payment methods, the connected bank, categories, privacy and tax forms.
