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Even if you think social graphs are the future of banking/payments, Twitter is still an... interesting... strategy. It's exactly the wrong social graph for that

by ke88y 3y ago

Even if you think social graphs are the future of banking/payments, Twitter is still an... interesting... strategy. It's exactly the wrong social graph for that sort of thing. (I also don't think that hypothesis makes a lick of sense -- Apple+Google, not any particular app, is the "WeChat of the west".)

notahacker 3y ago
And even if you think the Twitter social graph is the right social graph for it, it seems unlikely that the best way of converting it into a ubiquitous payment platform is to make a lot of noise about most of its user base being bots, relaunch the "verification" feature as something which has nothing to do with verification, wade into populist politics, and slash its employee base whilst panning the quality of its tech platform.
- fomine3 3y ago
  Also many people had been suspended their twitter account for unknown reason after Elon. Anyone would want to use it for payment? lol
er4hn 3y ago
It worked well for WeChat because they were able to launch a feature at a point when there were not very strict AML requirements in China and it was much easier to get consumers and merchants onboarded compared to credit cards. I don't have any anecdotes about how often person2person payments are done on WeChat vs person2business, but I have seen it being used very frequently for p2b. If you can build a low friction app that solves a problem, people will use it. That being said, Wechat payments are also rife with every form of scam, irreversibility, and fake QR code issues that people in the West warn about. That (and the AML stuff) is why it seems to be getting more scrutiny by the Chinese govt.
- ke88y 3y ago
  > If you can build a low friction app that solves a problem, people will use it. For p2b, Apply Pay lets me tap my power button twice and hold it next to the payment terminal. Hard to get lower friction than that. For p2p, the space is already saturated (Zelle, Venmo, etc.) It's unclear why I would want to use Twitter -- sorry, x -- for this in particular. Also, with the launch of FedNow, the days of new entrant intermediaries in the USA are coming to a close. Finally, as Goldman Sachs just learned, consumer banking is a brutal business. I think the closest they got to building anything like breaking into consumer credit/banking was becoming the bank that supported the Apple-branded credit card.
lostlogin 3y ago
WestChat

by ke88y 3y ago

notahacker 3y ago

And even if you think the Twitter social graph is the right social graph for it, it seems unlikely that the best way of converting it into a ubiquitous payment platform is to make a lot of noise about most of its user base being bots, relaunch the "verification" feature as something which has nothing to do with verification, wade into populist politics, and slash its employee base whilst panning the quality of its tech platform.

fomine3 3y ago
Also many people had been suspended their twitter account for unknown reason after Elon. Anyone would want to use it for payment? lol

er4hn 3y ago

It worked well for WeChat because they were able to launch a feature at a point when there were not very strict AML requirements in China and it was much easier to get consumers and merchants onboarded compared to credit cards. I don't have any anecdotes about how often person2person payments are done on WeChat vs person2business, but I have seen it being used very frequently for p2b. If you can build a low friction app that solves a problem, people will use it. That being said, Wechat payments are also rife with every form of scam, irreversibility, and fake QR code issues that people in the West warn about. That (and the AML stuff) is why it seems to be getting more scrutiny by the Chinese govt.

ke88y 3y ago
> If you can build a low friction app that solves a problem, people will use it. For p2b, Apply Pay lets me tap my power button twice and hold it next to the payment terminal. Hard to get lower friction than that. For p2p, the space is already saturated (Zelle, Venmo, etc.) It's unclear why I would want to use Twitter -- sorry, x -- for this in particular. Also, with the launch of FedNow, the days of new entrant intermediaries in the USA are coming to a close. Finally, as Goldman Sachs just learned, consumer banking is a brutal business. I think the closest they got to building anything like breaking into consumer credit/banking was becoming the bank that supported the Apple-branded credit card.

lostlogin 3y ago

WestChat