We never touch your money
Ladle Club keeps a record of who owes what. It does not take payments, hold funds, or move anything between anyone. Here is why that is deliberate.
The obvious thing for an app like this to do is process payments. Take a card, take a cut, settle up automatically. We do not do that, and we do not intend to.
Because a club is not a business
The people at these tables already know each other. They lend each other things, feed each other, and settle up by whatever means they have used for years. Putting a payment processor between friends changes the character of the thing. A cover charge feels different from chipping in, even when the number is identical.
Because holding money is a different company
The moment you hold someone's funds you are in a regulated business with obligations, audits, and a support burden that has nothing to do with dinner. That company would be worse at the actual problem, which is the coordination, and would have to charge for it.
Because the record is the hard part anyway
Almost all the friction in a group is not the transfer. It is knowing what the number should be. Once everybody agrees on what a seat cost, who ate, who brought what and where a balance stands, the payment itself takes eleven seconds in an app people already have.
So that is what we build: a shared, honest, boring ledger. What a seat costs, what was spent, what each person's balance is, and every entry behind it. Your host settles up with you the way they always have.
What this means in practice
We hold no card details and no bank details, because we have nothing to do with them. A balance in the app is a record of an agreement between you and your host, not a claim on anything. If it is wrong, it is wrong because somebody typed it wrong, and a host can fix it in a few seconds.