Inspiration
During our research there was an evident gap in the market for a product that splits bills with friends and family. Furthermore, through our own personal experiences, we understand the struggle of chasing people for payments.
What it does
It is a bill management system that allows users to enter groups via a code. Users can then add an outstanding payment which can be paid by the selected members of the group. The user can then authorise if the payment has gone through. We have also created an XP system which takes into account how quickly the user has paid. The quicker the payment, the more XP they gain. Inside each group there is a leaderboard which ranks users based on how much XP they have.
How we built it
We built TrustSplit as a JavaScript web app using Node.js, Express and SQLite on the backend, and vanilla JS/HTML/CSS on the frontend. We added features incrementally: starting from a simple bill splitter, then layering in groups with join codes, user authentication, XP and time-based rewards, and a leaderboard-driven UI.
Challenges we ran into
Our biggest challenges were handling multi-user logic cleanly (especially group membership and per-user balances) and designing a trust-based payment flow that never actually moves money but still feels fair. We also had to debug a lot of subtle state issues (auth tokens, current user, and UI refresh) while keeping the interface clean and beginner-friendly to build under hackathon time pressure.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- Fully integrated back-end, interactive and modern UI. Proper planning with documentation. Learning new programming languages.
What we learned
Team and resource management/allocation. Team communication by combining individual pieces to create a fully functioning project.
What's next for TrustSplit
Currently there are no bank transactions taking place on the website; users are required to pay through their banking application. In the future we would like to integrate a payment system on our website to reduce hassle for users. This in turn will lead us to creating enhanced security measures such as 2fa or facial recognition to gain access to the website.
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