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"every single person I know uses Venmo" How does that happen. I don't know a single person who uses Venmo. Not one. I know a lot of people and I work in Tech.
by rc_kas 9y ago
"every single person I know uses Venmo"
How does that happen. I don't know a single person who uses Venmo. Not one. I know a lot of people and I work in Tech.
- tikhonj 9y agoVenmo is, effectively, a social network; it's going to get popular along social lines. Depending on whether it's caught on among your immediate friends and acquaintances, you'd expect to either know a lot of people using Venmo or very few.
- balladeer 9y agoIn India a lot of people use Splitwise. I am on it and my bill splitting, and personal borrowing/leding records are handled by the app. Though it doesn't handle actual money transfers yet; they have no such integrations. Is Venmo similar? https://www.splitwise.com https://www.splitwise.com
- aviraldg 9y agoThey've recently added support for settling via Paytm (which is the most popular mobile wallet in India) and I believe they also support Paypal. I love Splitwise; almost all of my friends at uni use it and pretty much all shared expenses go on it. I also use Walnut (http://www.getwalnut.com/ http://www.getwalnut.com/), not for the settlement feature, but rather for the expense tracking which automatically reads SMSes and builds up monthly expense reports.
- skinnymuch 9y agoWho is they in your first paragraph? Venmo? Or Splitwise? Venmo supporting PayPal makes complete sense considering it is a subsidiary of a subsidiary of PayPal. If it's Splitwise, then it seems like PayPal doesn't care so much for propping up Venmo. Interesting either way. Walnut seems like an interesting product. Thanks for the link.
- aviraldg 9y agoSorry for the ambiguity, it's Splitwise.
- nindalf 9y agoThink twice about using Walnut. Their business model is selling your financial details to the highest bidder. They claim it's as innocuous as wealthy users being contacted about investment opportunities, but I wouldn't take their word for it. Far better to use a vanilla expense manager. Maybe it takes an extra second to enter the details of the transaction but at least your data never leaves your device. That's the way it should be.
- Kihashi 9y agoNot really. In the US, Splitwise has a "settle up" button that lets your record a cash payment or use Venmo or Paypal to send the correct amount owed to the other person. Splitwise keeps track of who owes who. Venmo lets you pay them.
- backtoyoujim 9y agocharismatic early adopter is among the peer group would be my guess.
- jamescostian 9y agoI'm 19 and most people I know use Venmo. I'm curious - around what age are your friends? My parents don't know what Venmo is, and I don't think many of their friends (most in the age range of 40-60) do either.
- thanksgiving 9y ago> I'm 19 and most people I know use Venmo. I'm curious - around what age are your friends? My parents don't know what Venmo is, and I don't think many of their friends (most in the age range of 40-60) do either. Made in 1987 here. I have Paypal as well but I prefer Google Wallet. Google Wallet is directly connected to my bank account. I don't trust Paypal to connect it to my bank account. Why would you trust Venmo with your bank account I would never know. Am I... am I too old and too conservative?
- z1mm32m4n 9y agoI have a separate bank account for Venmo that I keep capped at a few hundred dollars. Getting robbed a few hundred is much better than a few thousand, and for the convenience of Venmo (especially on a college campus) it's a fine risk for me.
- BHSPitMonkey 9y agoSerious question: We all know PayPal has a penchant for freezing/seizing PayPal balances, but is there actually a single known case of them actually initiating an unwanted bank account transfer without the user initiating it (or someone otherwise losing money via Venmo)? Is this fear even rational? I can understand not wanting to support the company as a matter of principle, but I'm not sure I buy the risk angle.
- fossuser 9y agoVenmo was bought by Braintree which was bought by PayPal so venmo is basically PayPal now anyway. Everyone I know also uses venmo (Bay Area tech employees in their twenties). I prefer square cash, but this entire app ecosystem only exists because American banks don't allow free wires for some reason. The only people I know who use google wallet are google employees. As far as trust there's pretty limited risk, lots of protection/laws around bank access and easy to audit.
- extr 9y agoIt's really good for situations where you have large groups of people that all need to informally pay a small amount of money. If you've ever organized an event like this (like say...a college party), you know how annoying it is to chase down crumpled $1 bills from people. Venmo handily solves the problem so I'm sure that's why it caught on among this demo so quickly.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rjbwork 9y agoI only know 1, I also work in tech. I, have found developers and other tech workers to be, somewhat ironically, more "Ludditic" than the general population.
- Terr_ 9y agoI think it's because we've seen behind the curtain. Product X isn't as magical, and we've seen how it can go horribly wrong. I wonder if mechanical engineers tend to be safer drivers...
- dsr_ 9y agoI think it's a u-curve. Either you are hypervigilant about your personal information and security, or you relax and accept the inevitable.
- Tade0 9y agoI have one data point in the form of my father, who is a mechanical engineer. He always knew what you absolutely shouldn't do with your car, like give it gas on turns(wears cv joints in fwd vehicles) or keep the clutch depressed when you're standing still(wears some bearings I don't remember the name of). He has had the same car for the past 25 years now.
- burger_moon 9y ago" keep the clutch depressed when you're standing still(wears some bearings I don't remember the name of)." throwout bearing
- rhapsodic 9y ago>keep the clutch depressed when you're standing still(wears some bearings I don't remember the name of). It's the throwout bearing. Your father has a point, but I would rather keep the clutch in. Too much thinking involved putting it in neutral every time you stop.
- 9y ago
- brandonmenc 9y agoAre you an old? I didn't use it until I shared an apartment with some friends who were ~15 years younger than me. Every single one of their cohorts used it, all the time.
- sgift 9y agoI've never even heard of Venmo before today, so maybe I'm just getting old ..
- chillwaves 9y agoMost everyone in my office uses it. Makes picking up lunch for the group so much easier.
- kentt 9y agoThe only time I hear about it is when people on HN say everyone uses it.
- swiley 9y agoThe girls on tinder jokingly ask for it in their profiles.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoWhy downvoted? I have seen many Tinder profiles with "Send me/Venmo me $5 and see what happens". Scammy but true.
- phonon 9y agoI don't think any of my friends use snapchat...and yet...
- almostApatriot1 9y agoI've heard there's a West Coast/East Coast divide when it comes to Venmo with it being much more popular on the east coast.
- ducttapecrown 9y agoIt's really big at my large (10k - 30k) state university in California.
- cs2818 9y agoI've noticed it has entered the vocabulary of students at the university I'm at in Mississippi (where new trends seem to arrive later), so I assumed it was fairly popular across the country at this point.
- skinnymuch 9y agoHow's college in Mississippi? I'm thinking not many HNers are in that state.
- dbg31415 9y agoYou old? (= I am. My neighbor's kid introduced me to it. Now I can't live without it. Being able to pay my maid or gardener when I'm not home... priceless. I never carry cash or a wallet any more. Slip an ID card in my phone case... good to go.
- schrodinger 9y agoBe careful, they technically don't allow commercial transactions and will freeze your account (and reverse transactions) if they catch you. I got a stern warning after selling something on Craigslist and accepting payment via venmo, they must have figured it out by the note and lack of network of friends with the buyer.
- fossuser 9y agoThat's a bad idea because you're likely to get scammed: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2015/09/venmo_scam_and_fraud_why_it_s_easy_to_get_ripped_off_through_the_mobile.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2015/09/venm... Basically if you're doing a transaction with an untrusted person the time it takes for things to clear means you can be taken advantage of.
- AstralStorm 9y agoIt is not about scams, but lost earnings from PayPal services which are expensive for a wire transfer. Venmo has a similar dispute system and you can often bounce on credit card too.
- skinnymuch 9y agoI've heard getting scammed by people you don't know (I guess people you know too) is really easy on Venmo. Especially in cases like CL. Be careful.
- mdn0420 9y agoJust another data point, everyone in my group of friends and even friends of friends uses Venmo. We're in our early 30s, many in tech and live in California.
- jgh 9y agoI know lots of people who use venmo, in tech. (LA)
- kristianc 9y agoLikewise in the UK. We have Faster Payments and a heavily consolidated banking system here, turning banking apps into a de facto P2P payments platform.
- abritinthebay 9y agoSerious question: how old are you? I’m 37 and probably wouldn’t know anyone using it in my normal social circle except I happen to know a bunch of ~24 yr olds (some younger) via a younger colleague. Of those you are younger guess how many use Venmo? Every. Single. One. Not every day, or all the time, but regularly: especially with friends & at weekends. It’s spread so we’ll split lunches at work occasionally with it. Hell, there are several restaurants in Berkeley that allow you to pay with it because college kids use it so much.
- shinymark 9y agoI'm a 35 year founder of a small company in San Francisco. I had never heard of Venmo until recently. The dividing line among my team is around 30 years old. Below 30 -> use Venmo all the time. Above 30 -> never heard of it.
- abritinthebay 9y agoSounds about right. I much prefer it for payments amongst friends than anything else now though. It’s rather good. I would love to know if the college crowd was a specific target for venmo: it’s nailed it
- kevstev 9y agoThis divide isn't really an age thing IMHO, its an attitude about money (related to age) thing. In my early-mid 20s most of my friends were just starting out and counting every dollar. Taking the hit for an entire round of drinks or the pizza delivery was painful enough that you asked for everyone to chip in or at the very least had a careful mental accounting of whose turn it was to buy next (and if they somehow weaseled out if it, that was a strain on the friendship- and I am sure most have cut some moochers out of their life). This may vary by your group and where they at in life, but by my late 20s, those things mattered a lot less. If I buy someone a beer, I just hope they will get me back at some point and if not, then I bought them a beer- no big deal-enjoy! (well enjoy, unless this is the fifth time in a row I have done this and you haven't gotten me back). I am in my mid-late 30s, and I have Venmo. I just tend to not use it very often, only for fairly big ticket items- concert/event tickets, someone buys a gift for someone else that we all chip in on, a restaurant gives a hard time about taking multiple credit cards, etc.
- notyourwork 9y agoI'm also in tech and never heard of it until my wife introduced me to it. Her and her friends use it regularly.
- lojack 9y agoI'm 30, work in tech, and most of my friends and family (in my generation) use Venmo. Weirdly enough, I don't really use Venmo with my friends in tech (different circles). Our use case tends to be for fantasy football, splitting vacation homes, hotels, bigger gifts for the parents, and other more expensive things. Replaces checks more than cash I'd say.
- skinnymuch 9y agoHah. All this talk and I just realized yeah the more techy a person I know is, the less likely they use Venmo. The use cases I see are similar to your last paragraph.
- sethammons 9y agoI'm in tech. Never heard of it. I mentioned it to my wife, "Hey honey, have you heard of this neat app Venmo?" Her: "yeah, I use it all the time." She viewed it like a newer paypal. She has paid friends with it, and they have paid her with it.
- ryanSrich 9y agoHm. How old are you? I'm 27 and everyone I know uses Venmo. I'm not even in the valley or the bay.
- 2_listerine_pls 9y agoMaybe he works at Venmo.
- skinnymuch 9y agoHave you used Venmo before? Either way, if you connect your contacts (not sure if it's just FB or overall contacts too), I have a hard time believing you won't see at least one semi-active person you know using it. To be sure, not saying you should connect your contact info to Venmo. It is a privacy matter after all. Even my dad who has virtually no real friends outside the husbands of my mom's friends, had multiple contacts using Venmo when I got him to use the app so we would have an easier time paying for stuff between us. I don't know a lot of people, but my Venmo activity feed of friends has at least a dozen transactions a week. I have ~300 FB friends and about half that in Venmo "friends".
- deftturtle 9y agoMost people in my graduating class use Square Cash. The next oldest class, which graduated this year, mostly uses Venmo. Very much a social network effect
- naner 9y agoSame here. I only know about Venmo because the people who stole my credit card number used it to pay themselves.