iou
A currency for any group that needs one
iou is a points and currency tracker for networks of people. You create a network, define its currency, invite members, and everyone in it can send, request and track balances. What the currency actually means is deliberately left to you.
- On the App Store
- 7
- Supabase
The idea
A family gives kids stars for chores. A group of friends squares up after a trip. A company hands out points that turn into rewards. Those are three apps in the App Store and one mechanic underneath: make a currency, exchange it, keep score.
So iou builds the mechanic and refuses to pick a use case. Presets may come later; the engine underneath stays generic.
The tension worth naming
A network can carry a lot of configuration: currency rules, permissions, how redemption behaves. Almost nobody should ever feel that. The whole design is an argument about progressive disclosure: sensible defaults, advanced settings that stay out of the way until asked for, and an amount-entry flow that feels fast and certain rather than form-like.
The shorthand I use for it: Discord and Revolut, if they had a baby, and it only plays with fake money. Discord for the identity model: a global account, a per-network nickname, invite-first communities. Revolut for how sending and splitting should feel.
Where it stands
On the App Store. It was built spec-first: components, flows and design tokens were written down before they were built. Multi-language from day one, now in English, German, Swedish, French, Spanish, Italian and Chinese, because a network's members often do not share a first language.
