Who can solve “payments to friends”?

Yesterday I visted Relish restaurant in Churchgate with my French classmates. The chocolate fondu is to die for! Don’t miss the Cheese Nachos. Too unhealthy but heaven.  This is post is not about my unhealthy indulgence in food but about making payments when you go out with your friends. There’s still no proper solution to it.  When I was in France, I saw my friends making equal payments through credit card by asking the waiter to swipe each cards for a certain amount. That works but is still inconvinient. Back in India, most restaurants don’t even want to deal with multiple swipes for a single table payment.  Payment in cash doesn’t work either, there’s always the “change” issue.  A new app for this doesn’t work either because 1.  the app needs to be installed by everyone 2. it needs to be available on all OS This can be solved by an app that everyone uses and is already installed. Considering Indian market, only two apps come to my mind. Facebook and WhatsApp.  I know Facebook allows you to make payment to your friends in the US but I haven’t been able to test it out for obvious reasons.  That said, I wouldn’t trust Facebook under Mark Zuckerberg. While FB would sell my purchase and spending history to advertisers and I wouldn’t even know about it.  WhatsApp is still owned by Facebook.  Besides, WhatsApp and Facebook, I feel Paytm is in a very good position to solve this problem. It’s still not universally installed among my friends circle.