I find Venmo very useful, but one of the first things I did was make any payment from or to me private. I don't understand why anyone would want to make that public.
Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are
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Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are
#22I have never disagreed with something so much.
While I'm financially not doing so bad, I grew up poor. When I was college age going out with friends was complicated- if we all handled our own bills it was one thing, but when I'm not drinking and only eating cheap food to save money splitting the check would literally mean I'm subsidizing other people friends and could be the difference between being able to afford to go out or not.
Apps like this level the playing field and make it a lot easier for people of different incomes to socialize together with less awkwardness.
Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are
#23I find Venmo very useful, but one of the first things I did was make any payment from or to me private. I don't understand why anyone would want to make that public.
Well, there is a multi-billion dollar industry built on top of public transaction records...
Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are
#24I find Venmo very useful, but one of the first things I did was make any payment from or to me private. I don't understand why anyone would want to make that public.
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Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are
#25On the contrary, I find it removes social friction if you go out to eat relatively often. You can still buy rounds of drinks or pick up the tab; no one is stopping you from being generous. In college I found it way more tedious to try and "keep-even" with classmates. Combine that with any sort of gossip around "they always shortchange" (maybe they're not good at tax+tip mental calcs), and I'm all for removing uncerta…
Yeah, I second that it removes friction. I hate the "lets split the bill evenly"-approach. It makes me feel like I leech of others if I want something expensive, and the other way around if I'm not very hungry but have to pay for everybody else having three courses.
Yeah, they ought to use bill roulette (choose a penny out of the bill to choose who pays). You still get the jerk who doesn't tip, though.
Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are
#26It is possible to make one’s ledger and contacts private, but many users overlook these options ... I'm sorry, what? The default is to make all of my transactions public? What the absolute living f---.
It's not all transactions, just social ones. People share their personal information on social media all the time, particularly information that relates to a social interaction. Since money is often a component of social interactions, a public record of social transactions essentially adds no information to what people have already voluntarily posted on other social forums. I use Venmo all the time, and since the dollar amounts aren't shown (only the participants and a short memo) I generally feel comfortable with public transactions. More sensitive interactions I make sure to set private.
Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are
#27I think the problem here is expectations. If you went to dinner with a friend, and thought everything was covered but then later received a bill in the mail there's an aspect of unexpected demands in it. If your friend said ahead of time "hey I've got this app that will let us split the bill easily, that okay?" then you'd be expecting it and there's no social transgression. Social norms and expectations are the ficti…
Restaurants are definitely accustomed to splitting bills in Salt Lake City as well. I was surprised to come to a larger city like San Francisco and have to chase people for their share since most restaurants won't give individual receipts.
Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are
#28Another 'how [tech company/product] is ruining [social norm]' thought piece.
Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are
#29I don't understand why Venmo is such a popular app. I've always used Square Cash and just recently tried Venmo for the first time. My sister and I had dinner and she offered to split the tab. She refused to try Square Cash and had me download Venmo. On the iPhone it felt like buggy port with some weird social feature that allows users to see public transaction.
This is only the case if you were very late to p2p transactions. Venmo was well embedded in my social circles by the time there was any competition (with the possible exception of Google wallet. With something so utility-oriented, why go out of your way to rebuild an entire network? You may as well ask why anyone uses Facebook when Google+ had better features on launch (like post visibility granularity).
But it's a US thing, right ? Here in Belgium/Europe I can take out my smartphone, open my bank app, input my friend's account number and send him money right away (35 years ago you had to do it by paper, 25 years ago there were computers in the bank and now it's on the phone/tablet/web browser). Of course it's really going from one bank to the other so it's not p2p but the UX is as smooth.
Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are
#30I see systems like Venmo being commoditized and Venmo being an acquisition target or being disruptive for large banks . My reasoning is below. I must not be a true milennial (29) .The new hip social networks don’t make sense to me or don’t work. Not only that but if this is a feature of Vennmo I’ll stay with only transferring cash to people with boring old Chase Quickpay with a bank account I don’t have to pay for wi…
Venmo was already acquired by PayPal last year. I don't think it's an acquisition target anymore.
And technically, Venmo was acquired by Braintree, which was subsequently acquired by PayPal.