41–50 of 207 posts
This kind of thing will be the death of Venmo, and makes me wonder why they haven't moved faster. An app that already has your social network will have more success adding friend payments than your friend payments app trying to add a social network.
50% of snapchat users are under 18 [1]. which this video seems to clearly target (production style is fun, quirky, light hearted, even the actors are young). Yet they require a debit card and the use to be 18+. I guess they are hoping their young users stick with it for a few more years. [1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/315398/snapchat-user-age-...
I'm assuming their VC-backers are hoping to see traction without waiting for the underage half of the user base to grow up, and are really hoping it doesn't become the fun, friction-free and ephemeral way for that demographic to send their friends funds from their parents' bank account.
I love this because it looks just as simple as Venmo, but I don't need to convince people to download the app.
You don't need to download anything to use Venmo, you can use their website.
Square loses something like 25 cents per Square Cash transaction [1], and now they want more transactions? I wonder if Snapchat is paying those fees, and if so how they think they're going to make that money back from their users. [1] http://qz.com/248572/squares-search-for-a-viable-business-mo...
I think there is a corollary too, though I cannot attribute it: "Every social media site attempts to expand until it becomes a bank. Those companies which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."
Then they discover how much support effort goes into stopping, or untangling frauds, scams, and robberies.
I think the primary challenge is convincing users that it's secure. Snapchat has a relatively poor reputation in security (whether that's deserved or not), and everyone I know just uses Venmo. Venmo has Facebook integration, so if you're Facebook friends, it's really easy to send money. It seems like integrating into a platform that's supposed to be ethereal is a weird fit, but who knows -- maybe it'll catch on.
Even if the users of snapchat were particularly concerned with the security of this feature, they alleviated that concern in the post by stating that all of the financial security will be handled by Square which is building it's reputation of security in mobile payments.