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Send Money to Friends in Messenger

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Re: Send Money to Friends in Messenger

#91

Post by ForHackernews »

The only reason this "problem" remains to be solved is that the US banking industry can't get their act together. Most of the rest of the industrialized world has had near-instantaneous bank-to-bank transfers for more than a decade. Here's a good story contrasting the UK system with the US: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episode-...

Expect all of these virtual wallet payment systems to die a swift death once Visa/Mastercard/Citi/Bank Of America/Chase finally pulls their finger out.

Re: Send Money to Friends in Messenger

#93

Post by dragonwriter »

smackfu wrote: post #80
gk1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You owe me $20" "OK, hold on, here's an ATM." ... "Here you go."

When you get used to something like Venmo, and a critical mass of friends are using it, it's amazing how effortless it is. Take a cab somewhere, one person pays with their credit card, the other people settle up in the next 30 seconds. Done.

Square Cash has pretty much no friction, even without other people actively using it, because recipients don't need to create an account.

Re: Send Money to Friends in Messenger

#94

Post by smackfu »

I'm surprised they don't seem to be using any kind of wallet. From the description, transactions are only bank-to-bank, with a typical 2-3 day ACH delay. So if I pay my friend Joe $20 today, and he pays me $20 tomorrow, it still takes days to settle up. And the only record of the transaction is embedded in the chat? A wallet would have it settled up instantly.

Re: Send Money to Friends in Messenger

#95

Post by fizzbatter »

darkstar999 wrote: post #69
wongarsu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with both Google and Facebook essentially being advertising companies a notable amount of people are hesitant to give them access to personal data. That could be a real hindrance to them becoming ubiquitous payment providers.

> a notable amount of people are hesitant to give them access to personal data. I bet this number is much lower than you think it is. People outside of the tech/hacker scene don't care about privacy (in this context). "Who cares if Facebook knows that I went to McDonalds?"

I tend to agree with that, regardless. My general take is that i want life empowering features driven by data. Of course, i would prefer to not give X company my data, but until a home-brew solution comes to light it's unrealistic for me to expect privacy and these types of features. In the end, i want the features. I want Google Now (well, i want what it represents.. it still sort of sucks haha).

Re: Send Money to Friends in Messenger

#96

Post by VLM »

anuragbiyani wrote: post #79
gk1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You owe me $20" "OK, hold on, here's an ATM." ... "Here you go."

"The total for both of us was $55, so you owe me $27.5." "OK, here is some random bank's ATM which charged me $44 to get $40 (2 x $20) out, and now you say you don't have $12.5 in change on you ... well, shit." ... "What will you prefer: GWallet or FB ?"

"OK you say you owe me a beer from last week so here's a $20 and we're even"

"Oh you need the full $27.50 because your life will collapse due to a lack of $7.50 in cash although nobody uses cash, well, there's an ATM in the lobby thats free on my network, I'll spot you $30 on the $27.50 and you owe me a can of soda next time"

The problem with a bazzilion services all trying to extort small transactional fees either short term or long term is the marketing about their fee can't avoid mentioning that the fee is really small and we're discussing fairly small amounts of money.

Re: Send Money to Friends in Messenger

#97

Post by smackfu »

andrepd wrote: post #65
zacharypinter wrote: post #6

At this point, I just want one of these pay-with-your-phone solutions to win and be ubiquitous. The current situation is almost comical. "Do you have Venmo? Haven't set that up yet, can you send over Paypal?. No, what about Square Wallet? Nope, what about Gmail?"

Don't forget about Bitcoin.

If your debts are in dollars, I don't see any point in Bitcoin with its fluctuating exchange rate.

Re: Send Money to Friends in Messenger

#99

Post by grubles »

puranjay wrote: post #89
andrepd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget about Bitcoin.

Almost no one outside of my techie friends know about Bitcoin. Even fewer understand how it works, so that's a no go.

My 70 year old dad can use bitcoin. I'm sure your friends can learn.

Re: Send Money to Friends in Messenger

#100

Post by patejam »

differentView wrote: post #88
billyhoffman wrote: post #52

Interesting. Facebook has over 1.1 billion users, but their existing financial systems (Facebook credits, etc) process only 1 million transactions a day. I would have thought it was higher. Of course, that's daily, so another way to look at it is 0.1% of Facebook users pay for something on Facebook on a given day, which strangely feels high.

>Facebook has over 1.1 billion users People really need to stop repeating this. As someone with over 30+ Facebook accounts (for games) and knows lots of other Facebook gaming friends with 10+ accounts as well as non-gamers who keep 2+ accounts (primary, parents/relatives, cosplay/hobby, work, etc...). I'd discount whatever number Facebook reports by at least 20%.

Well it's also 1.1 billion active users per month, so that makes it slightly better IMO.
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