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Introducing Snapcash

blog.snapchat.com

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Re: Introducing Snapcash

#131

Post by Negitivefrags »

jordanthoms wrote: post #112

Meanwhile, everybody outside the US is trying to figure out how it's taken so long for easy person-to-person payments to happen there. Here in NZ, you've been able to pay directly to someone's bank account number for free for as long as I can remember, and my bank introduced payments to mobile numbers, facebook accounts, and email addresses 3 years ago. (Oh and it's totally safe to broadcast your account number to ev…

As someone else from NZ I would like to second this. We got a US bank account for our company and I was surprised how archaic the US banking industry is.

Another thing very interesting in NZ/AU is EFTPOS. EFTPOS is like the credit card system only with no transaction costs. Any shop in NZ/AU will take it.

The original business model for EFTPOS was that the user pays a fixed charge per transaction. I think it was something like 20c originally. However, because each bank was free to charge it's customers whatever it pleased for EFTPOS, price competition very quickly reduced that cost to zero (Which to be fair is what the actual cost of a purely electronic transaction should be).

There is no reason not to pay for even the most trivial purchase with EFTPOS so I haven't carried cash around in my entire life.

The only reason everyone still uses credit cards as well is for online purchases. EFTPOS is in person only. The number on the front of the card has no ability to be used for making a payment.

I think the place where VISA is starting to get more inroads into the NZ market is with NFC. NFC is getting more prevalent, and we are also starting to see things like this turn up as well: https://www.asb.co.nz/paytag/

Re: Introducing Snapcash

#132

Post by enneff »

crazypyro wrote: post #72
enneff wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snapchat has come under fire because a significant portion of those nudes are technically child porn.

Yeah, except there is no proof that there is any exchange of goods taking place in the overwhelming majority of these. Do you think teenage girls and boys are really going to start selling their nudes? Just on a shallow examination of this possibility, it seems exceedingly unlikely to ever be a problem on a scale larger than a handful of cases. The social aspects of trying to sell "nude" pictures of yourself would be…

I didn't say there'd be an epidemic of underage people selling nude selfies. I said I think this is going to get interesting. By that I meant that there will likely be some overlap between the child porn stuff and the new payments system.

Re: Introducing Snapcash

#133

Post by dcre »

jfernandez wrote: post #21

Maybe I'm crazy (and admittedly a little old) but I like the separation of my social and financial software "zones". I know there are tremendous reasons to incorporate this directly into a social product but I just can't shake that feeling. Am I alone in this or does everyone here on HN embrace this with arms wide open for actual use (vs experimenting or playing around with new products)?

Plenty of people will feel the same way, but I suspect the proportion is much lower among people under 25. Pretty soon people will probably use software that integrates social and finanicial so often they won't even think of it as anything special.

Re: Introducing Snapcash

#134

Post by jpmattia »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #131
jordanthoms wrote: post #112

Meanwhile, everybody outside the US is trying to figure out how it's taken so long for easy person-to-person payments to happen there. Here in NZ, you've been able to pay directly to someone's bank account number for free for as long as I can remember, and my bank introduced payments to mobile numbers, facebook accounts, and email addresses 3 years ago. (Oh and it's totally safe to broadcast your account number to ev…

As someone else from NZ I would like to second this. We got a US bank account for our company and I was surprised how archaic the US banking industry is. Another thing very interesting in NZ/AU is EFTPOS. EFTPOS is like the credit card system only with no transaction costs. Any shop in NZ/AU will take it. The original business model for EFTPOS was that the user pays a fixed charge per transaction. I think it was some…

> EFTPOS is like the credit card system only with no transaction costs.

Somebody is picking up the tab. Is it the merchants? or the banks? gov't (=taxes)?

Re: Introducing Snapcash

#135

Post by barnaby »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #121
thatmatt wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that they ARE sending eachother money, just in less efficient ways. Looking at how people use snapchat it isn't as much about ephemeral as it is about speed. It's much easier to send a picture to someone in snapchat as the flow is better, and it doesn't leave a stupid photo on your phone (and on several cloud backups) that you didn;t want to stick around forever (e.g. check out this awesome car,…

How are they able to transact with Visa and Mastercard without fees?

I assume any "no fees" clause means that they're not taking fees at this time. It doesn't mean "no fees anywhere in the system". So there very likely is a 3% fee to the user, just not from snapchat.

Re: Introducing Snapcash

#136

Post by barnaby »

softdev12 wrote: post #126
jordanthoms wrote: post #112

Meanwhile, everybody outside the US is trying to figure out how it's taken so long for easy person-to-person payments to happen there. Here in NZ, you've been able to pay directly to someone's bank account number for free for as long as I can remember, and my bank introduced payments to mobile numbers, facebook accounts, and email addresses 3 years ago. (Oh and it's totally safe to broadcast your account number to ev…

the global issue, in theory, is easily solved with a cryptocurrency like bitcoin. if bitcoin could ever get a better user experience (don't have to go through the pain of setting up a wallet, etc.), these type of services would be much less attractive.

Agreed. Going from a NZ bank to another country's bank isn't that simple anymore. Using an international currency makes it equally simple anywhere in the world.

Bitcoin already has a better user experience than banks. Just give it another year or two, to the point where bitcoin will be invisible to users the same way that Linux is invisible (yet, the world runs on it). These services will be rewritten with bitcoin under the hood and nobody will even know or care.

Re: Introducing Snapcash

#137

Post by hdevalence »

jpmattia wrote: post #134
Negitivefrags wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone else from NZ I would like to second this. We got a US bank account for our company and I was surprised how archaic the US banking industry is. Another thing very interesting in NZ/AU is EFTPOS. EFTPOS is like the credit card system only with no transaction costs. Any shop in NZ/AU will take it. The original business model for EFTPOS was that the user pays a fixed charge per transaction. I think it was some…

> EFTPOS is like the credit card system only with no transaction costs. Somebody is picking up the tab. Is it the merchants? or the banks? gov't (=taxes)?

Your question was answered in the parent comment: the users paid, and competition drove the fees to zero, i.e., the costs are now paid by the banks.

Re: Introducing Snapcash

#138

Post by tmcz26 »

jordanthoms wrote: post #112

Meanwhile, everybody outside the US is trying to figure out how it's taken so long for easy person-to-person payments to happen there. Here in NZ, you've been able to pay directly to someone's bank account number for free for as long as I can remember, and my bank introduced payments to mobile numbers, facebook accounts, and email addresses 3 years ago. (Oh and it's totally safe to broadcast your account number to ev…

Same here in Brazil. Bank accounts are "push-only", though utilities companies can "pull" if I allow them to. My bank even has a slick app to send money to others using their mobile number.

Credit card fees still exist and are pricier than the US, though. All chip-and-pin so POS fraud is much lower than Card Not Present.

Re: Introducing Snapcash

#139

Post by Negitivefrags »

jpmattia wrote: post #134
Negitivefrags wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone else from NZ I would like to second this. We got a US bank account for our company and I was surprised how archaic the US banking industry is. Another thing very interesting in NZ/AU is EFTPOS. EFTPOS is like the credit card system only with no transaction costs. Any shop in NZ/AU will take it. The original business model for EFTPOS was that the user pays a fixed charge per transaction. I think it was some…

> EFTPOS is like the credit card system only with no transaction costs. Somebody is picking up the tab. Is it the merchants? or the banks? gov't (=taxes)?

The merchant has to buy (or rent) an EFTPOS terminal. The bank also charges the merchant a setup fee to connect your terminal to your bank account. Once that has been done there are no more fees.

You have to look at the way it evolved. Because this is a service offered to customers by each bank in competition with each other, the competition drove the price per transaction to zero.

Re: Introducing Snapcash

#140

Post by jvm »

david_shaw wrote: post #22

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.

Does Venmo actually have a better reputation for security than Square?
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