I've yet to see a payment app reach any major usage in my social network, which is extremely fragmented among Google Wallet, Snapcash, PayPal, Square Cash, Popmoney, Simple, bank-specific apps i.e. Chase Mobile... (Weirdly enough I don't know anyone using Venmo, though I'm familiar with it from HN and the like.) It seems like everyone wants a simple payment app, but there's a huge 'sign-up fatigue' from the fragmentation, and no single app has reached a useful saturation. I wish I were seeing the "viral spread" others see and don't really even care much about feature parity. :\
Venmo Five Years Ago
61–70 of 99 posts
Re: Venmo Five Years Ago
#62I've yet to see a payment app reach any major usage in my social network, which is extremely fragmented among Google Wallet, Snapcash, PayPal, Square Cash, Popmoney, Simple, bank-specific apps i.e. Chase Mobile... (Weirdly enough I don't know anyone using Venmo, though I'm familiar with it from HN and the like.) It seems like everyone wants a simple payment app, but there's a huge 'sign-up fatigue' from the fragmenta…
That's odd. Literally 95% of my friends are on Venmo, with the only holdouts being the people who refuse to grant account withdrawal permissions to a third party.
Re: Venmo Five Years Ago
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems more like #twentysomethingproblems, not #millenialproblems. As a GenXer this was stuff I dealt with far more in college and just after than I do these days. I imagine it was similar for my Boomer parents.
I think that's my point. Once you get older, this problem drops away. You probably don't have roommates (no need to split rent or utilities) and you probably eat out less often (and when you do, you can split the check). If you're a parent, you're paying for things that require a check or cash. The check then become's "frictionless" as you already require it.
This is true. And I had a longer, but more rambling reply, saying that.
I can still see situations where I'd prefer this (or similar) to cash. For covers at bars ("oops, forgot to hit the ATM! Can you get me?"), for buying tickets to shows (to ensure we're seated near each other), and other situations. But they're still infrequent compared to a decade ago for me.
Re: Venmo Five Years Ago
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you say cheque I think "fax", or "betamax" or "pager number".
Unfortunately, America hasn't reached the same level of financial sophistication as the UK regarding money transfers. It will eventually, obsoleting hacks like Venmo.
What is the sophisticated UK alternative to Venmo?
Re: Venmo Five Years Ago
#65I've yet to see a payment app reach any major usage in my social network, which is extremely fragmented among Google Wallet, Snapcash, PayPal, Square Cash, Popmoney, Simple, bank-specific apps i.e. Chase Mobile... (Weirdly enough I don't know anyone using Venmo, though I'm familiar with it from HN and the like.) It seems like everyone wants a simple payment app, but there's a huge 'sign-up fatigue' from the fragmenta…
That's odd. Literally 95% of my friends are on Venmo, with the only holdouts being the people who refuse to grant account withdrawal permissions to a third party.
I don't like the "bucket" approach or Venmo's emphasis on linking to Facebook, so I don't have an account and use Square Cash or BofA transfers instead. I'm the exception though, I'd agree that the vast majority of my friends use it.
Re: Venmo Five Years Ago
#66> It was riding the twitter wave in letting you interact with handles (usernames) over SMS. I'm curious, were any of these SMS service comparies successful as interactive SMS services? It seems like most of the services like Twitter, Venmo, etc. "started" as SMS services but quickly moved to apps once the iPhone appeared. And only then did they blow up. But maybe I'm wrong about that. What does Twitter/Venmo non-noti…
Magic made a huge splash on HN when it debuted, not sure about its current popularity.
Re: Venmo Five Years Ago
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perfect example of the HN bubble.
You're the on in the bubble. Young people don't write checks. Full stop.
Agreed. I am a millenial and I was super pissed when I discovered my new landlord required me to pay by check. Mostly because this required me to figure out how to get checks from the bank.
Re: Venmo Five Years Ago
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, America hasn't reached the same level of financial sophistication as the UK regarding money transfers. It will eventually, obsoleting hacks like Venmo.
What is the sophisticated UK alternative to Venmo?
https://www.vocalink.com/
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episo... is a Planet Money episode that goes into details of how it works.
Re: Venmo Five Years Ago
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're the on in the bubble. Young people don't write checks. Full stop.
Agreed. I am a millenial and I was super pissed when I discovered my new landlord required me to pay by check. Mostly because this required me to figure out how to get checks from the bank.
Why would you be super pissed? Accepting credit cards costs the merchant 3%, a substantial amount for the amount charged by a landlord.
Which is why check payments dominate larger transactions. Merchant fees are expensive compared to an ACH check fee (25 cents tops).
Re: Venmo Five Years Ago
#70Question: does anyone know how/if Venmo makes money or is it just a loss-leader for Braintree/PayPal? I use it for thousands of dollars of transactions a year but I have never paid a penny in fees or seen an ad. People claim that Venmo acts as a bank and invests my carried balance but I can't imagine that's lucrative enough to pay all the bills.
They don't.