Square Cash is beautiful, elegant, and effortless. I encourage my friends to use it over Venmo whenever I can. Unfortunately, Venmo is wildly more popular among people I know.
Example #1A: It's absolutely insane for Square to have an app targeted toward sending money to friends, splitting bills, etc. that doesn't have a built-in calculator. It's inexcusable that if I'm paying two even shares of a $213.42 bill split between seven people, I need to either do some mental math or leave the app to use another calculator.
This is one of the most common actions I take in Venmo. Until they get their act together on that, there's just no way I'm switching. It's a classic example of thinking that simplicity is the same thing as removing features.
The bank account vs. debit card is one time on setup - and has little to do with day to day interaction. Not do I see how the UI is obtuse - it takes 3 clicks to pay someone.
The one legitimate gripe you have (the facebook/social network), is a plus in my opinion - in the sense I can pay anyone by just knowing their name. Friend of so-and-so is throwing a party? I can look up their name and throw in, and there is an in-app log of the transaction.
I use Cash to send/receive money to my mom. I never have to worry about the the amount sent, what was it for and when it was sent and who it was sent to because its my mom. Its rarely the same for my friends.
I like Venmo, but I vehemently disagree here. Every time I recommend Venmo to someone who hasn't heard of it, I have to explain why they should give their banking information to a company they've never heard of. It's an onboarding disaster. I recommend Google Wallet to most people now since it's both a trusted name and doesn't require linking to a bank. My conversation is usually as simple as "Hey download Google Wallet - it's an easy way to zap money between people - and send me $x".
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/safety_net/2015/02/...
On the other hand, my intern at work keeps getting Venmo spam. "So and so asked for $1: Hey, don't pay me $1. Instead of to 'http://foo.bar' and sign up for a job where you'll make $2000 per month from home!" and the like. That sort of stuff is a full stop turn off for me.
My guess is for people who don't bank traditionally, these services make sense even though they come with some weird (to me) tradeoffs. Apparently the spam, reliance on yet another third party, broadcasting of what they're doing with their money, etc is ok for their user base. We're just not their target customer.
3 annoying parts about the app:
- lack of built-in calculator, the Venmo's bulit-in calculator makes it really easy to calculate the split between friends.
- constant prompt for security code in order to pay someone.
- expired requests, there should be a way for me to see all the requests instead of going to each friend page to see the request.
In my (Android) version of the app this is what happens if you click the button in the upper right hand corner.