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Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

nytimes.com

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Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#301

Post by cyphar »

jamescostian wrote: post #129
rc_kas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"every single person I know uses Venmo" How does that happen. I don't know a single person who uses Venmo. Not one. I know a lot of people and I work in Tech.

I'm 19 and most people I know use Venmo. I'm curious - around what age are your friends? My parents don't know what Venmo is, and I don't think many of their friends (most in the age range of 40-60) do either.

I'm 20 and I've never heard of Venmo outside of HN. To be fair, I am also in Australia, so it's more likely that it just hasn't caught on. The major bank here (CommBank) has made paying other people frictionless (you can send money to a phone number, via NFC, cardless cash, or just by regular transfer) so it's likely that Venmo wouldn't have much of a market here.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#302

Post by majormajor »

gozur88 wrote: post #98

>"It’s making people less generous and chivalrous,” Ms. Pennoyer said. “It used to be you’d go to a restaurant, and you’d put down your credit cards and split it 50-50, even if one person had steak and one had chicken. But now people pay exactly to the cent." Spoken like the person who always orders steak. I don't drink, so I'm always irritated when I go out to dinner with a bunch of people and someone says "let's ju…

I don't drink, and rarely have the most expensive entree, and hate it when people try to figure out the exact perfect split of a check. It somehow always takes longer than it should, if we're all friends here making roughly the same amount, let's just split it evenly.

Dining out with friends isn't solely about turning dollars into calories.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#303

Post by cheapsteak »

mabbo wrote: post #263
cheapsteak wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We seem to not live in the same Toronto Plenty of places will give you a hard time if you try to split a bill. Kinton ramen refuses to split for parties larger than 4 (and is completely inflexible on this)

Really? I've been meaning to try them (I live near their North York location). I guess I'll make sure to only go there with my wife.

If you're into ramen and ever come downtown, give Raijin a try. Better than Sansotei Santouka and Kinton, imo.

What's good in North York?

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#304

Post by Xenograph »

Bahamut wrote: post #291
extr wrote: post #77

Young millennial male, every single person I know uses Venmo. IMO this article largely misses the point of the app. It's replaced cash/checks is all, it's not some huge social upheaval in the way we use money that needs to be analyzed. In my experience it's rarely used for splitting bills for dinner or picking up bar tabs (I can't remember the last time I went somewhere that wasn't able to split the bill on their end…

As someone in their early 30s living in the Valley, I actually don’t know too many people who uses Venmo. My friends are generally not too hung up on having exact numbers, as it isn’t worth the awkwardness & gives the opportunity for someone to be generous. Maybe I generally just know decent human beings though. Greediness/cheapness is just not a problem in my circles.

You seem to be implying that people who use Venmo and/or prefer to deal in exact numbers aren't decent human beings. I suggest you reevaluate that position and consider how greed might not be the root cause of someone behaving that way.

I'd also argue that using a Venmo doesn't take away the opportunity for someone to be generous. Venmo isn't much different from cash except that it makes it more convenient to be precise - it certainly doesn't force anyone to be precise though.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#305

Post by skinnymuch »

rc_kas wrote: post #117
extr wrote: post #77

Young millennial male, every single person I know uses Venmo. IMO this article largely misses the point of the app. It's replaced cash/checks is all, it's not some huge social upheaval in the way we use money that needs to be analyzed. In my experience it's rarely used for splitting bills for dinner or picking up bar tabs (I can't remember the last time I went somewhere that wasn't able to split the bill on their end…

"every single person I know uses Venmo" How does that happen. I don't know a single person who uses Venmo. Not one. I know a lot of people and I work in Tech.

Have you used Venmo before? Either way, if you connect your contacts (not sure if it's just FB or overall contacts too), I have a hard time believing you won't see at least one semi-active person you know using it. To be sure, not saying you should connect your contact info to Venmo. It is a privacy matter after all.

Even my dad who has virtually no real friends outside the husbands of my mom's friends, had multiple contacts using Venmo when I got him to use the app so we would have an easier time paying for stuff between us.

I don't know a lot of people, but my Venmo activity feed of friends has at least a dozen transactions a week. I have ~300 FB friends and about half that in Venmo "friends".

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#306

Post by skinnymuch »

aviraldg wrote: post #289
balladeer wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In India a lot of people use Splitwise. I am on it and my bill splitting, and personal borrowing/leding records are handled by the app. Though it doesn't handle actual money transfers yet; they have no such integrations. Is Venmo similar? https://www.splitwise.com

They've recently added support for settling via Paytm (which is the most popular mobile wallet in India) and I believe they also support Paypal. I love Splitwise; almost all of my friends at uni use it and pretty much all shared expenses go on it. I also use Walnut ( http://www.getwalnut.com/ ), not for the settlement feature, but rather for the expense tracking which automatically reads SMSes and builds up monthly e…

Who is they in your first paragraph? Venmo? Or Splitwise? Venmo supporting PayPal makes complete sense considering it is a subsidiary of a subsidiary of PayPal.

If it's Splitwise, then it seems like PayPal doesn't care so much for propping up Venmo. Interesting either way.

Walnut seems like an interesting product. Thanks for the link.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#307

Post by skinnymuch »

balladeer wrote: post #279
rjbwork wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only know 1, I also work in tech. I, have found developers and other tech workers to be, somewhat ironically, more "Ludditic" than the general population.

It is slightly embarassing (or not) but I started uses WhatsApp (or any IM app) somewhere in early-mid 2016. And the final request came from my sister back in the village. She complained she couldn't add me on WhatsApp. When I joined everyone was there and I was promptly added to tens of groups which I promptly left one by one. I have been an Android developer for 6 years now.

Which groups did you get added to? I too was surprised getting added to multiple groups. I've silenced some. Left some. But stay in all the family ones. Did you leave family ones too?

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#308

Post by skinnymuch »

ryandrake wrote: post #265
jamescostian wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 19 and most people I know use Venmo. I'm curious - around what age are your friends? My parents don't know what Venmo is, and I don't think many of their friends (most in the age range of 40-60) do either.

Around 40 here and I’ve never heard of Venmo. I don’t know if any of my social circle use it but nobody’s mentioned it.

My uncle (mid 40s) who I got into Venmo has never heard of it in his social circle either. Connecting his contacts showed two people he knew around his age using it pretty actively. Besides that though, his activity feed is barren compared to mine (late 20s).

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#309

Post by skinnymuch »

lojack wrote: post #257
rc_kas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"every single person I know uses Venmo" How does that happen. I don't know a single person who uses Venmo. Not one. I know a lot of people and I work in Tech.

I'm 30, work in tech, and most of my friends and family (in my generation) use Venmo. Weirdly enough, I don't really use Venmo with my friends in tech (different circles). Our use case tends to be for fantasy football, splitting vacation homes, hotels, bigger gifts for the parents, and other more expensive things. Replaces checks more than cash I'd say.

Hah. All this talk and I just realized yeah the more techy a person I know is, the less likely they use Venmo. The use cases I see are similar to your last paragraph.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#310

Post by skinnymuch »

cs2818 wrote: post #229
almostApatriot1 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard there's a West Coast/East Coast divide when it comes to Venmo with it being much more popular on the east coast.

I've noticed it has entered the vocabulary of students at the university I'm at in Mississippi (where new trends seem to arrive later), so I assumed it was fairly popular across the country at this point.

How's college in Mississippi? I'm thinking not many HNers are in that state.
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