This isn't the article we intended to write; we had another one prepared, complete with screenshots and launch dates. Then we discovered something, and honesty seemed better than silence.
Why this idea exists at all
In every group there is always one individual who pays first and asks questions later; the one who books the table, covers the cab, fronts the trip money because someone has to and the waiter is standing right there. Weeks later they are the ones sending "sorry to be bothering you again" messages to their friends.
It seemed as though the problem had been solved until we looked at it more carefully. The apps which track these debts do precisely that; they keep a record of the amount and then wait for you to pursue it. And each of them gets your friends to download something, make an account, verify an email, remember a password, all so a group of individuals who meet each other on a weekly basis are able to agree as to who owes what for the biryani.
Therefore we created the opposite. One person creates the split and everyone else gets something they can open without having to install anything at all. No account required, no password, nothing to remember. Their money goes directly to the collector's bank account and never touches ours, because we never wanted to be in the middle of other people's money, and in this instance, other people's friendships.
The part nobody tells you about building alone
It's been a few months of nights and weekends. The app was named something else for exactly one day before we discovered a live competitor with almost the same name, and we therefore had to rename everything, including the logo. We removed phone verification entirely after realising it would force a dependency we did not want.
We taught it to read a restaurant bill from a photograph, on the device, so the photo stays on your phone. Then we found that real receipts bear no comparison with the neat ones we tested. Each bill in this country prints in a different way. The first one we actually scanned turned the restaurant's pin code into a six-figure item on the bill. We sorted it out. The next one broke it in a completely new manner. We sorted it out. The third one charged us GST twice. What did we do? We sorted that out too.
That is the rhythm of this: build something you are proud of, meet reality, rebuild. We were fine with it. We thought that the difficult part was now over.
Now the part we owe you an apology for
When we announced Bharpai, we said this, in these exact words:
"Your friends tap a link and their UPI app opens with their exact share prefilled. They pay. Done."
We were proud of that sentence since it was the entire pitch, and it is also, as we now realise, not reliably true.
UPI apps have stopped accepting person to person payments that are opened from a link. It is intentional. Over the past year NPCI has been closing the same channel that scammers used to trick people into paying strangers, first by killing person to person collect requests entirely, and now by rejecting these payments that are initiated by a link. The link opens, the amount is right there, and then the payment fails.
We ought to have picked this up earlier. That is our fault.
If you joined the waitlist because of that claim, you deserved better diligence from us. We are sorry.
What we did with the bad news
We spent one night testing all the ways that a rupee can go through UPI. Links, app specific links, various banks, various apps, different amounts. Almost all of them failed in the same manner, except one.
Scanning does work. A QR code is a push payment that is initiated by the payer's own app, and it is precisely this aspect which the new rules are designed to protect. Scan the code and the exact amount is clearly shown there, with no need to type it in, no mistakes, and no transaction being blocked.
Therefore we changed the situation, so that your friends no longer have to tap something in order to pay you. They scan something instead, and Bharpai makes sure the code in front of them carries the right amount.
What it looks like now
Sit down together and raise your phone. If all of you owe the same amount then one code covers the table. If the shares are different then the app steps through a code for each person, with their name on it. They scan, the exact amount appears, and they pay.
Settling later. Your friend opens the link and sees their portion, a detailed breakdown, together with a QR code which they can scan in order to pay you directly. If you prefer to do it yourself, the page also provides your UPI ID for you to copy, or it opens your UPI app so that you can fill in the details by hand. There's still no app to install, still no account to create.
It is a tap longer than what we promised. We won't pretend otherwise. But it does work on all UPI apps, and it is honest.
What has not changed
Nothing will ever be installed by your friends, and your money will never pass through our servers. Splitting will always be free, with no ads and nothing sold about you. We prefer to be a small honest thing that functions rather than a large story that does not.
I truly appreciate you having waited for this. There are now a few hundred of you, and the fact that you signed up for something that did not exist yet is the reason it was rebuilt rather than abandoned during a terribly bad week.
We'll update again once it is on the Play Store. The subsequent post will contain fewer apologies in it.