Airbnb started testing its split payments feature earlier this year. The feature made it easier for group to manage payments for a combined booking. If a group of people are looking to book an Airbnb property, one person has to charge the entire amount to their card and then manually collect the payments from other members of their group. The service offered no way to automate this or make it easier for groups to handle payments for their bookings. That changes today as Airbnb is now rolling out its split payments feature globally.
The split payments feature lets users split a payment for a booking 16 ways beforehand. When the company started testing this feature back in June, it said that the pilot project was being conducted on a small scale.
Airbnb today announced that it has rolled out its split payments feature globally. One of the top requests for new features from Airbnb users last year was group payments and the company has finally delivered on that request.
The company has tested this feature with more than 80,000 groups across the globe in almost 175 countries. More than 44 different currencies have been used as well. No wonder Airbnb is calling itself the first accommodation provider to build and implement a seamless global split payments feature.
Trip organizers can now request to book a listing that qualifies for splitting payments. The reservation is then put in an “awaiting payment” state after the organizer’s portion of the booking is charged and the host’s calendar is blocked. A reservation can be held up for 72 hours which gives plenty to of time to others in the group to pay their portion.
Filed in . Read more about Airbnb. Source: press.atairbnb