SharePay: The Student-Led Fintech Revolutionizing Group Payments at Checkout

SharePay, a new fintech startup founded by University of Lancashire students, has launched a group payment platform designed to eliminate the friction of upfront costs in shared transactions. By allowing multiple contributors to pay directly at the point of purchase, the venture addresses a significant pain point in digital commerce and hospitality sectors.

What was announced

SharePay is a group payment solution that integrates directly into merchant checkouts, allowing several individuals to split the cost of a single transaction in real-time. Developed by Zeejah Qazilbash, an MSc Entrepreneurship and Innovation student, and software engineering graduate Anas Syed, the platform aims to replace the traditional "pay now, chase later" model common in group bookings and shared activities.

The technology includes a merchant checkout interface, a mobile application, and a guest-payment flow. This guest feature is particularly notable as it allows invited participants to contribute to a payment without the requirement of creating a SharePay account. Since its public launch in August, the platform has integrated with major payment service providers including Stripe, Adyen, and Worldpay. Syed developed the entire backend infrastructure and software platform to ensure compatibility with these global payment gateways.

The startup’s development was supported by several tranches of seed funding and grants. This includes an initial £1,000 from a university competition, £2,000 from a Dragons' Den-style event, £2,000 from the Be Inspired Business Awards (BIBAs), and a £500 start-up grant from SWEF. Based in Preston, the company currently reports approximately 200 active users and is in the process of onboarding early commercial clients while targeting larger organisations for strategic partnerships.

"It's a great business to apply my skills to. I've created an easy to use platform which now supports major payment service providers, Stripe, Adyen and Worldpay. We've only been operating since August but SharePay is already growing and attracting interest from potentially large clients."

Anas Syed at SharePay

The companies involved

SharePay is an emerging fintech venture operating out of Preston, Lancashire. Founded by Zeejah Qazilbash and Anas Syed, the company focuses on the intersection of social commerce and payment processing. It positions itself as a solution for merchants in sectors where group transactions are frequent, such as travel, events, and hospitality. The business was incubated through the University of Lancashire’s enterprise ecosystem, which provided the mentorship and initial capital necessary to move from a conceptual pitch to a functional software platform.

Supporting the venture's early growth is SWEF, an organisation that provides start-up business grants to young entrepreneurs. SWEF focuses on providing the initial financial bridge for early-stage businesses that might otherwise struggle to secure traditional venture capital or bank lending. By combining university-led innovation with regional business awards like the Be Inspired Business Awards (BIBAs), SharePay represents a growing trend of academic-born fintechs looking to disrupt specific niches within the broader digital payments landscape. The company remains independent and is currently focused on scaling its merchant adoption and user base within the UK market, leveraging the technical foundations built during its time at the University of Lancashire.

What this means

The rise of "split-at-checkout" functionality represents a logical evolution in the payment sector, moving beyond the peer-to-peer (P2P) reimbursement models popularized by apps like Venmo or Revolut. While P2P apps solved the problem of moving money between friends, they didn't solve the liquidity issue for the person paying the full bill upfront. SharePay’s integration with heavyweights like Adyen and Worldpay suggests that the technical barriers to multi-party transactions are lowering. However, the challenge for such niche platforms remains merchant acquisition; for this to move the needle, SharePay must prove to retailers that group payments significantly reduce cart abandonment compared to traditional single-payer methods.