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I'll use Venmo until they pry it from my hands, it's one of the most life-transforming services I have ever used. I'll just repost my comment from the last Ven

by habosa 11y ago

I'll use Venmo until they pry it from my hands, it's one of the most life-transforming services I have ever used. I'll just repost my comment from the last Venmo thread here: ========================================= Venmo was started by UPenn alums so it was popular among my friends long before it was a phenomenon (one of my good friends interned there and wrote the BlackBerry app). I used to use it exclusively by SMS starting around 2011. It used to be smart enough where I could text in "Pay John $5 for food" and it would figure out which John I meant and do it. I loved that. It's been amazing to watch Venmo grow to what it is now. If I could only keep three apps on my smartphone, I would choose Uber/Lyft, Venmo, and Google Maps. I can't navigate my life without all three of those. In my last year of college my Venmo year in review showed that I had spent $17k on Venmo and received $18k. So not a huge net, just a constant movement of money in and out among my friends (rent, food, parties, etc). If I had to use cash we would have never been able to make the small things work, and if I had to use PayPal I would have accrued $100s to $1000s in fees. So basically: thank you Venmo. You make my life measurably simpler.

x0x0 11y ago
I'm still stunned that people use Venmo. Letting paypal or any of their ilk -- and I'm one of the many people with a very negative paypal experience -- have access to your bank account sidesteps many or most of the consumer protections that credit cards give you. It's all fine until it isn't, and when it goes wrong, Venmo has possession of your money and can suck funds straight out of your checking account. Your cc doesn't and can't. If something goes wrong between you and your cc, they have to go to court to get their hands on your cash and you have a whole set of protections, ranging from general consumer laws to the courts themselves, the FDCPA, and the CFPB. viz http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/safety_net/2015/02/venmo_security_it_s_not_as_strong_as_the_company_wants_you_to_think.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/safety_net/2015/02/...
jaysonelliot 11y ago
Venmo still takes several days to transfer the money to your account, and you have to remember to request the funds—they don't even begin the transfer process until you do that. It would literally be faster to write your friend a check. We need instant cash transfers in the United States, like the rest of the world has.
- habosa 11y ago
  My Venmo cashout transfers take <24h if I do them during business hours. Not instant, but not several days. How does the rest of the world manage instant transfers? I thought the ACH method was still in use not because we're technologically slow (see: High Frequency Trading) but because it saves a huge amount of coordination to sum up net inter-bank transfers at the end of the day rather than constantly shuffling money around due to the fact that the net is often very small.
  - alexforster 11y ago
    > How does the rest of the world manage instant transfers? The same way the US stock markets can do 5 billion trades per month in realtime, with technology: technology that costs money, wipes out a major investment revenue stream, and necessitates cooperation between competitors. Does it surprise anyone that the EU pulled this off and the US is the farthest behind?
    - pgwhalen 11y ago
      To be fair, the actual transfer of money between stock market participants is no faster than it is for personal bank accounts.
- wiwa 11y ago
  I made this Android app to provide instant check transfers off the phone screen: www.getlightcheck.com Unfortunately most banks don't support it with their image deposit apps, but in theory, it would be a practicable "check replacement" instead of Venmo. Maybe if enough people want to use it the banks would adjust their photo-deposit apps to accept checks from it.
mahyarm 11y ago
I find venmo kludgey and irritating compared to square cash. It's more of a pain to sign up for, you have to manually ask for your money, they publicly transmit your transaction history to the world and it's not obvious that they do so. They also send you 'anti-fraud' emails if you make joke comments about your terrorist sandwich. It's like a paypal, but worse.
- georgeglue1 11y ago
  As someone who worked on payment processing in the US, there are a hundred absurd or obscure regulations. The most important involve making sure terrorists can't use your service to launder money; this usually boils down to adding some basic or clunky checks as there's really nothing else to do.
soared 11y ago
Paypal is free for personal use.
pbreit 11y ago
Square or even PayPal are generally better. Venmo prefers that the 2 parties know each other which is a significant limitation.

by habosa 11y ago

x0x0 11y ago

I'm still stunned that people use Venmo. Letting paypal or any of their ilk -- and I'm one of the many people with a very negative paypal experience -- have access to your bank account sidesteps many or most of the consumer protections that credit cards give you. It's all fine until it isn't, and when it goes wrong, Venmo has possession of your money and can suck funds straight out of your checking account. Your cc doesn't and can't. If something goes wrong between you and your cc, they have to go to court to get their hands on your cash and you have a whole set of protections, ranging from general consumer laws to the courts themselves, the FDCPA, and the CFPB. viz http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/safety_net/2015/02/venmo_security_it_s_not_as_strong_as_the_company_wants_you_to_think.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/safety_net/2015/02/...

jaysonelliot 11y ago

Venmo still takes several days to transfer the money to your account, and you have to remember to request the funds—they don't even begin the transfer process until you do that. It would literally be faster to write your friend a check. We need instant cash transfers in the United States, like the rest of the world has.

habosa 11y ago
My Venmo cashout transfers take <24h if I do them during business hours. Not instant, but not several days. How does the rest of the world manage instant transfers? I thought the ACH method was still in use not because we're technologically slow (see: High Frequency Trading) but because it saves a huge amount of coordination to sum up net inter-bank transfers at the end of the day rather than constantly shuffling money around due to the fact that the net is often very small.
- alexforster 11y ago
  > How does the rest of the world manage instant transfers? The same way the US stock markets can do 5 billion trades per month in realtime, with technology: technology that costs money, wipes out a major investment revenue stream, and necessitates cooperation between competitors. Does it surprise anyone that the EU pulled this off and the US is the farthest behind?
  - pgwhalen 11y ago
    To be fair, the actual transfer of money between stock market participants is no faster than it is for personal bank accounts.
wiwa 11y ago
I made this Android app to provide instant check transfers off the phone screen: www.getlightcheck.com Unfortunately most banks don't support it with their image deposit apps, but in theory, it would be a practicable "check replacement" instead of Venmo. Maybe if enough people want to use it the banks would adjust their photo-deposit apps to accept checks from it.

mahyarm 11y ago

I find venmo kludgey and irritating compared to square cash. It's more of a pain to sign up for, you have to manually ask for your money, they publicly transmit your transaction history to the world and it's not obvious that they do so. They also send you 'anti-fraud' emails if you make joke comments about your terrorist sandwich. It's like a paypal, but worse.

georgeglue1 11y ago
As someone who worked on payment processing in the US, there are a hundred absurd or obscure regulations. The most important involve making sure terrorists can't use your service to launder money; this usually boils down to adding some basic or clunky checks as there's really nothing else to do.

soared 11y ago

Paypal is free for personal use.

pbreit 11y ago

Square or even PayPal are generally better. Venmo prefers that the 2 parties know each other which is a significant limitation.