For many Thai people, a common scenario for all gatherings would be the following: your group of friends, no matter how much you have in common, there would still be some things that you don’t see eye to eye and that’s okay based on individual personality and taste (case in point: try asking this controversial topic — how do you feel about mint chocolate? Tasty or toothpaste-y). Even the beverage of choice could vary, so unless you assign someone to make the ultimate call, deciding what to order can take time. After tons of debates and negotiations going around, you will likely consent to the majority votes. But what happens if you really despise the selection, or perhaps that friend of yours is on a diet and they want to skip the dish. Some only have a few bites and to have them pitch in fully doesn’t seem right somehow. By the time the check arrives, even when you opt out of a family style meal and choose to order food separately, chaos still ensues.
If you were to live in the U.S., you could make a request to the waiter to split the bill and only pay your share. Unfortunately, that option is not vastly popular here in Thailand. To resolve this matter the more difficult way, we first need to find a volunteer who would gladly cover for the entire table. The responsibility would then fall upon them to calculate how much each owes (can be as simple as making notes on the receipt or the more advanced version like using Excel Spreadsheet or creating Google Form). For any mathematicians out there, this might seem like a simple task. However, the most dreadful part has yet to come… the so-called money collecting phase. I’m certain nobody wants to be that guy who keeps bugging people about the same thing over and over again, but that assignment is sadly tied to the job. That’s why only a few would be keen on assuming this role — some only do so because no one else would.
But now there’s someone ready to take that bullet for you, and his name is “KhunThong”.
Created by KBTG, KhunThong is a LINE chatbot that acts like the group’s treasurer. This clever bird can help you with any shared expenses, from splitting the bills, calculating individual shares, to collecting money from your friends and reminding them every morning at 10am. Simply add KhunThong to your friend list on LINE application, invite him to your group and you’re good to go. Whenever you need help with the bill, give him a shout out by typing #ขุนทอง and follow the given instruction.
KhunThong’s official launch was held via Zoom on 15 June 2020. Opening the stage was none other than KBTG’s chairman, Krating — Ruangroj Poonpol. He began that not only has COVID-19 caused a drastic change to our lifestyle, to which we dubbed as “The New Normal”, it also made us realize how important our interaction with friends is. When we have to work, play and stay at home, the only group of people we see is restricted to our family, making us cherish all those times we were allowed to freely hang out with friends. When time becomes limited, we need to spend it on what truly matters, instead of wasting it on menial tasks like expense calculation.
In the age of ambient intelligence where banks exist everywhere, it is our main priority to develop new technology that will augment social interaction. Should there be any part of our customer’s burden our specialty can help alleviate, particularly regarding their financial management, we are ready to support all the way. With that in mind, KBTG aspires to create solutions for any of these annoying problems.
As for the story behind KhunThong, Worakrit Louwitawas, Advanced Innovation Product Manager at KBTG, said that he often found himself as his group’s unofficial treasurer. It was his duty to create a huge spreadsheet that would help calculate everyone’s share and repeatedly ask them to pay him back afterward. Disheartening as this issue is, it has ignited a certain desire in him to invent a solution that would end this misery once and for all. Coincidentally, at that time there was a hackathon going on at KBTG. Worakrit decided to pitch this idea to his friends and together they started developing KhunThong. After its first introduction to the public on the stage of Beyond Agile by KBTG 2019, the reception was incredibly positive. They continued testing out the product using the internal sandbox, then moved on to the dogfooding phase with KBank and KBTG employees. These steps might seem excessive, but it is to ensure that KhunThong was really stable and secure before the official release.
As for the functionality, here are the three main features of KhunThong:
1. Split Bill Either type in the information manually or upload a picture of your receipt to your LINE group, KhunThong will automatically isolate the item and price. The user can then select whether to split the bill equally or not. If it’s the latter, KhunThong will ask the user to select which belongs to whom, or who’s feeling generous and wants to pay more than the other. Feel free to adjust the input and KhunThong will let you know the final tally.
2. Pay KhunThong currently accepts four types of payment 1.) link your bank account to KhunThong to create a one stop button 2.) transfer using K+ app 3.) transfer using other mobile banking apps, then post the e-Slip with QR Code in the chat for verification 4.) pay with cash and click ‘confirm’ to notify KhunThong.
3. Collect Money for members who have yet to pay, prepare to hear from KhunThong. At 10am sharp in the morning, a daily reminder will be sent to the group without delay. This will continue until all shares have been collected. By integrating a bit of peer pressure, the success rate was huge with 90% of receipts resolved in one day!
In response to data privacy concerns, Krating and Worakrit assured that although KhunThong resided in LINE groups, it would not access any of the information irrelevant to its usage. Being a product of KBank and KBTG, it’s bounded by rules and regulations set by the Bank of Thailand, including the upcoming PDPA (Personal Data Protection Act).
Fast forward to now, KhunThong has since released two other features. “Scheduled Bill” allows users to set up an automatic reminder for recurring payments, ranging from services like Netflix and Spotify to monthly rent, while the recently launched “Multiple Bills” combines all the charges and informs you of the total sum. Having hit the 650,000 monthly active user milestone within less than six months, this chatbot has proven to be unstoppable. What’s to come in 2021? Stay tuned to KBTG Life or www.kbtg.tech to find out more.
Add @khunthong to your friend list and LINE group today! And leave the rest to this little birdie of ours.
