Splitwise Doesn't Process Payments -- It Tracks Who Owes Whom
Splitwise itself doesn't move money -- "settling up" means recording that a payment happened, either through a linked payment method like Venmo or PayPal, or manually marking a debt as paid after settling in cash.
Practical Details
The genuine automation is the "simplify debts" feature: instead of everyone paying everyone else back individually, it calculates the minimum number of transactions needed to settle an entire group's mutual balances.
Actionable Considerations
- Use "simplify debts" in a group to minimize the actual number of payments needed, rather than settling every pairwise balance individually
- Link Venmo or PayPal if you want to pay a balance directly from the app, since Splitwise itself doesn't process payments
- Mark a debt as settled manually after a cash payment, since Splitwise won't know about it otherwise