Splitting the check used to be a ridiculous exercise of handing the wait staff a deck of plastic with instructions like '20 more on the blue card'. So now one

Splitting the check used to be a ridiculous exercise of handing the wait staff a deck of plastic with instructions like '20 more on the blue card'. So now one person can bear the costs and charge everyone at the end of the evening. This is marginally better, ideally you could just 'venmo' the venue directly but this would upset the mediocrity of US banking infra and the card monopolies.