It’s Easy to Get Scammed on Venmo • Hacker News Board

Re: It’s Easy to Get Scammed on Venmo

#61

Post by DatBear » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 4:38 PM UTC

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Once you understand that, you can see why Venmo doesn’t want users to make merchant transactions, by which it really means payments outside their networks of close acquaintances. (“Merchant transactions,” Vaughan tells me, “is sort of the catchall for the things that we can’t predefine.”) The analogous real world example is that you wouldn't leave a pair of tickets in a mailbox just because someone sent you a note promising to drop off an envelope of cash at a later date.

Isn't that why you're using a PAYMENTS platform, and not a PROMISE NOTE platform? When you receive or send a payment on a PAYMENTS platform, that's not, and shouldn't be, equivalent to a note promising cash. It should be the cash.

Since it's not, is it not fraudulent to say that it is and pass it off as that?

Re: It’s Easy to Get Scammed on Venmo

#62

Post by randyrand » Sun, Sep 20, 2015, 11:06 PM UTC

jakobegger wrote: post #47

girvo wrote: post #9

What I find interesting is that I don't know anyone here in Australia that uses these payment platforms. I wonder if that's because bank-to-bank transfers are so quick and easy these days? Most of the big banks even have ways of sending _cash_ to other people, to withdraw from any of that bank's ATMs with a code and no card. Anyway, the issue Venmo has here is similar to what banks also have to deal with: in theory y…

Same here in Austria. Bank transfers are free and instantaneous between customers of the same bank, and take one business day to other banks. And they are irreversible. Nobody needs to use something like Venmo here.

But how to you get their ID? Venmo uses phone numbers/facebook which is why it's so easy.

In America you need a ~20 digit account and routing number and even then Im not sure how to do it through my bank.

Re: It’s Easy to Get Scammed on Venmo

#63

Post by jakobegger » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 10:44 AM UTC

randyrand wrote: post #62

jakobegger wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here in Austria. Bank transfers are free and instantaneous between customers of the same bank, and take one business day to other banks. And they are irreversible. Nobody needs to use something like Venmo here.

But how to you get their ID? Venmo uses phone numbers/facebook which is why it's so easy. In America you need a ~20 digit account and routing number and even then Im not sure how to do it through my bank.

You use the IBAN (International Bank Account Number), which is a 20 digit number that you find on your bank card (it's similar to a credit card number).

Sure, you can't just transfer money to someone's facebook account, but I guess that the inconvenience of having to ask people for their bank account number before you can send them money isn't really that big of a deal.

Especially considering that we are used to paying everything by bank transfer. Things like rent, utilities, parking tickets... any time you get a bill, there's a bank account number on it that you need to transfer the money to. And you just pay it online using the bank's website.

(For paying recurring bills, you can also grant a company permission for "direct debit" for your account, so you don't need to do anything. It sounds risky, but I've never had any fraudulent charges on my account)