Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The guy who was nagging you to give him $3 cash for the cab ride is now requesting $3 from you on venmo for the uber, but it's the same guy, and he still needs to chill out and remember you split your case of beer with him last week.
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.
Is Venmo similar?
I, have found developers and other tech workers to be, somewhat ironically, more "Ludditic" than the general population.
I wonder if mechanical engineers tend to be safer drivers...
He has had the same car for the past 25 years now.
Now, I'm pretty sure this is because I don't live in the US. Is this a purely US-specific service, or is it available (and used) anywhere else.
If not, are there similar services in other countries? I believe Wepay in China is something similar, but I don't know much about that one either.
When I joined everyone was there and I was promptly added to tens of groups which I promptly left one by one.
I have been an Android developer for 6 years now.
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?
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.
But for the past several years I've just defaulted to Wallet ever since they added the ability to attach money to an email like you're attaching a file. I know it's just UI but that was sort of brilliant (if done in the typical fuss-less Google fashion so most don't even notice it).
So while I still lean toward buying rounds or taking turns paying for things with friends I see often, occasionally I'll be out someplace and unexpectedly need cash without a nearby ATM. If a friend has cash, I can just send them funds to pay back. Same goes the other way around.
Other times it's something like ordering tickets to an event and I just buy for myself and a few friends at the same time. Then if they end up going, they can forward me funds at their leisure and no messing with ATMs or writing checks.
Sounds like Venmo is used in a similar way but I've not started using it if only because I already have something I'm satisfied with and the handful of people who even want to use such a thing have it as well. I tend not to proselytize to other people who don't express an interest in doing things this way, but I've yet to run into anyone who is using Venmo.
Although maybe half a year ago I was single for the first time in years and saw a lot of people mostly-jokingly (I hope) on Tinder asking people to Venmo them $5 to get their attention. Seemed like either a cynical/ironic "why not?" sort of joke or the least ambitious prostitutes in history.
If you don't trust Paypal, I can understand why you don't trust Venmo.
Venmo is a service of PayPal, Inc., a licensed provider of money transfer services (NMLS ID: 910457). All money transmission is provided by PayPal, Inc. pursuant to PayPal, Inc.’s licenses. © 2017 PayPal, Inc.
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.
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.
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
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".
She viewed it like a newer paypal. She has paid friends with it, and they have paid her with it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also, beer example was just meant to highlight that friend we all have who practices "selective accounting" with our informal running tab. If I had any suspicion that $3 is make or break to someone I would gladly pay them what's owed and forget about the beer. Beer (and all vices really) have their own set of norms.
So I worked at a factory and he was a notary or some such function connected with real estate, working from home. One day I was running late for work, which was maybe fifteen minutes away by bicycle, and asked if he didn't mind giving me a lift. About halfway there he mentioned casually, "Oh, just so you know, I'll be billing you at my normal rate ($60/hr) for this ride." Thanks for the trouble, just pull over and I'll walk, buddy.
People may or may not have sane ideas about friendship and money.
If someone grabs a tab and sends me a Venmo bill, I'll happily send them their money. I would have rather grabbed the tab the next time. I won't be doing both.
(And vis a versa - If I say "I've got the tab" and the person sent me money, I'd be much less likely to invite them out in the future. I'd rather they just invited me out and grabbed a round.)
It took me a long time to learn that when your friend's dad tells you 'Please just call me John', continuing to address him as 'Mr. Smith' is less polite, not more. Same thing with money.
I had a landlord who wanted paid by check... I was able to set up an online bill pay with my credit union that automatically mailed out a physical check each month.
I was happy because I could automate it like I did my other bills, she was happy because she didn't have to pay credit card processing fees.
Explain to people why it is frustrating that they don't communicate how you're going to split things before doing it and don't expect anything back when you give away half a case of beer.
Both are equal offenses in the same class.
Maybe I'm just a tech-city millennial who hates interacting with people, but I've always kinda wondered why there isn't any POS system that prints out a QR or text code you can punch into your smartphone to pull up a digital receipt that you can claim what items were yours, auto-tally tax and tip, and just pay for it digitally or yes, even venmo-invoice everyone in the group.
Yes, I realize this is exactly the behavior the article was talking about it, but honestly, that article was a little "get off my lawn"-ish. If it's a beer, sure, I'll get a round, but if it's a 6-person birthday party where some people get the $12 salad because they're making teacher salary and the tech-bro's get the $36 steak but you all still want to be friends without the awkwardness different financial or socioeconomic situations getting in the way, then yes, everyone paying whatever they ordered makes sense.
Technology enables new behaviors and new norms, honestly.
If it means the guy or girl who gets 2x points on restaurant bills and making tech money fronts the bill and venmos what everyone ordered later, so be it. I would ask why isn't that even easier yet with my self-invoice-via-digital-bill-and-save-the-server-from-running-6-separate-cards app?
That said, the situation where someone ordered a $12 entree while someone else ordered a $36 one was solved when everyone paid in cash -- you just throw in your portion. It was only when everyone was trying to pay by card that this became an issue (which Venmo and ilk addressed).
People claiming that paying different amounts is some kind of "modern" problem are just ignorant of history -- everyone paying by card and splitting a bill being difficult is the modern problem.
That limit is artificially imposed though isn't? I also think this is mostly an American thing because its perceived as a "hassle" which is ironic because they're being tipped for their "service" in the US.
In Sweden I noticed for instance instance you can get a meal with a group of 10 people and at the end of the meal the server will walk around with card machine and run the individual cards at the table. It's not seen as a hassle at all just part of the job.
Back in Slovenia bill splitting doesn't exist. To me it's a completely American thing. The best they can do in Slovenia is charge everyone individually for their items, but that's not really bill splitting.
I used to wait tables and it's annoying to split many ways, but every POS system I ever used allowed splitting many ways. I never tested for an upper limit, but I soul routinely split to mid-teens of separate checks.
It's also not that uncommon to see the staff let you split the bill anyway on a case-by-case basis...
I do live in the UK where interbank transfer of cash is almost instant and free of charge, so the need for it is rather less, I suspect.
Even things like Google Wallet & Apple Pay seem to be treated with a “but... why?” attitude.
Young millennial male, I'd never heard of this thing until now. These things tend to be emblematic of poor local banking infrastructure. This reminds me a lot of echocash[1].
If I tried to pay anyone with it I can guarantee they'd say (a more polite version of) "WTF is that? No. Do you have money? Try money."
I agree that services like this only serve to fill gaps in antiquated banking systems. From what I understand, in Australia, for instance, people can send money easily for free between bank accounts and do so routinely without 3rd party services - including paying at stores. Circa 2009, a friend from Adelaide rolled eyes that we still used paper checks in the US. We still do.
What's an example of local banking infrastructure that helps alleviate the problem of needing to pay people money with ease? I'm not even sure how it works on my Huntington mobile app. I know I could do it fairly painlessly with Simple bank. Except it's really only easy if they're a Simple user I think. Otherwise I'll need to get their physical address which will mail them an actual check, or ask for their routing/checking.
Chase Pay makes it pretty easy I think? But really people who sign up just to use that and attach a non-Chase account are doing the same thing as Square Cash, Paypal, Venmo, etc.
edit: huh, interesting. On a Simple bank FAQ page about paying third parties, it also links some additional services:
https://www.simple.com/help/articles/payments-and-transfers/...
Here are a few common and useful services:
* Google Wallet - https://www.google.com/wallet With Google Wallet, you can send money to anyone in the U.S. with their email address or phone number. You can link your Simple account with your card number or your account and routing numbers.
* PayPal - https://paypal.com PayPal offers a wide variety of services. If you’re planning to use PayPal with your Simple account, here’s what you need to know: We cannot link to Paypal accounts under a business name, since your Simple account is for personal use. Some PayPal services may incur a fee. One thing to keep in mind when linking your Simple account to Paypal is that when you're asked for the bank name, you'll need to enter the name of our partner bank, BBVA Compass, rather than Simple.
* Square Cash - https://cash.me Square Cash allows you to send money for free with your debit card. You don't need a username or a passphrase—just the email address for the person you'd like to pay and your debit card number. Transfers are often instant, but they can take up to 1-2 business days.
* Venmo - https://venmo.com With Venmo, you can send money to friends and even authorize other people to withdraw funds from your Venmo balance. Venmo can be hooked up to Simple with your card number (make sure it's marked as debit, not credit), your bank account number, or both.
* Xoom - https://www.xoom.com Xoom primarily used to send money internationally. They do charge fees, which is typical for this type of service.
Interac solved the P2P payments problem for every social group that I'm in there.
I actually use Venmo in Canada with friends that have US bank accounts because it's still more convenient even having to calculate the exchange rate.
Why can't you just "Paypal it to you"?
It's because Venmo adds the voyeuristic aspect to an otherwise boring task of money transfer that PayPal had been doing just fine.
Maybe I generally just know decent human beings though. Greediness/cheapness is just not a problem in my circles.
I'd also argue that using a Venmo doesn't take away the opportunity for someone to be generous. Venmo isn't much different from cash except that it makes it more convenient to be precise - it certainly doesn't force anyone to be precise though.
While I'm financially not doing so bad, I grew up poor. When I was college age going out with friends was complicated- if we all handled our own bills it was one thing, but when I'm not drinking and only eating cheap food to save money splitting the check would literally mean I'm subsidizing other people friends and could be the difference between being able to afford to go out or not.
Apps like this level the playing field and make it a lot easier for people of different incomes to socialize together with less awkwardness.
The way we, now aged, uncool, unhip folks used to deal with this was that we would cover people like you discreetly.
One of the better off folks (read: professional receiving a paycheck rather than starving grad student) would take charge of the "pot", would figure out what was lacking and generally "tell" a couple of the other better off folks what to put in. I never had an issue covering an entire bill for someone and neither did any of the other folks. 1) We asked you to join us because we appreciate your company and 2) people probably did this for us when we were the poor ones.
This works very well unless you have someone freeriding who shouldn't (we had two people in our group who were really well-paid programmers who did this). When that happens, I would itemize the free-rider in excruciating detail and if he didn't put in every red cent, I would call him out on it.
Imho it's also the most reasonable approach that doesn't put anybody in an awkward position.
Why expecting people to pay what they owe upsets so many people I'll never understand..
Being able to pay for yourself feels like control, and it's doubly important to have that feeling when you're poor.
I say whatever. I'm not friends with people because I trade off doing nice gestures. Some people account for their money and would greatly prefer to balance the books. Fine. Is it really a big deal to pay what you owe? It's not like they asked you more effort or money. Pay the fucking invoice.
If someone wants to be nice in Venmo literally nothing is stopping them. Realistically, when I pay people on Venmo I tend to add a few bucks to round up. But expecting others to do that kind of thing seems stupid to me. The person on the other end is not nickling and dining you. You're trying to do that to them by suggesting you don't just pay the bill.
P.S.: I'm sick of hearing the phrase "silicon valley mentality." It's literally an app that bills people, there's 10s of them out there, none of them encourage any specific kind of behavior than what the person behind the phone takes from it.
It also means that I can order something expensive without feeling bad that I'm imposing on everyone else when we split the bill evenly. This is particularly relevant when you have friends with different incomes or lifestyles.
I'm pretty sure there is a Friends episode about this. Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I53n7ldcSGo
So you assume some unstated motivation behind something and then get angry about the thing you just made up? Hmmm...
Note that I've had friends try to split bills to the penny. I tell them to stop, because both our times are worth more than that. (The exception being if I know they need the extra cents, in which case it still seems more reasonable to round down in their favour.) That kind of gentle social shaming is productive and something I've noticed a lot of people my age shy away from.
TL; DR If you think Venmo is ruining your friendships, it probably isn't Venmo.
Aside from the social awkwardness/pettiness, it doesn't really work for typical bill splitting anyway, since it's not like they would remember what amount to search for, given that usually the person paying has the only receipt. Where this method really shines is when someone is reimbursing you in a bulk/lump payment -- in that case it's far more valuable to know that the actual amount was $304.01 instead of just something rounded to $300, since then it'll be a lot more work to figure out if that payment included a $6.23 item or another $7.98 item or whatever.
Spoken like the person who always orders steak.
I don't drink, so I'm always irritated when I go out to dinner with a bunch of people and someone says "let's just split the tab evenly. It's too much trouble to figure it all out." Since drinks are so expensive relative to food either I speak up and look like the jerk or end up paying much more than I should.
The next time we went to lunch and he conveniently didn't have change, I pulled out a stack of 100 $1 bills. I don't know if they do it any more but you could get them brand new and glued to a spine (called gluebacked). It's trivial to peel off exactly how many dollars you need. That stopped Rick's trying to steal the tips to pay for his lunch. I think was embarrassed that someone had actually noticed what he was up to and prepared for it.
But yeah I don't mind Venmo after getting skunked by friends who wanted to equally split the bill at a tapas restaurant. It made sense since we would be sharing little plates of food. So we agreed up front and then the two of them proceeded to drink everyone else under the table because of course the bill was subsidized.
I'm usually generous and forgiving about these things, according to my wife to a fault. But for someone who doesn't drink at all to suddenly have their evening's cost doubled is no bueno. I absolutely refuse to equally split the bill if people are going to drink even if it makes me look cheap. Now drinking in England is different - everyone's expected to pick up rounds and it's equally distributed. But sheesh trying to make people (particularly those that don't as a rule drink) pick up the majority of your drinking tab is just rude.
Mea culpa on not checking my reference earlier.
Dining out with friends isn't solely about turning dollars into calories.
If you go out often (2+ every one to two weeks), don't drink alcohol ($10+ per drink in NYC/SF, prob even $15+), and you don't eat meat (+15% I bet on average for a dish), and don't get dessert ($10+), why on earth should you be putting in an extra $20 to $50 more per meal? Why would I accept that from someone I consider a friend, or a guest?
I'm not wild about blowing my entertainment budget for the month in one meal, which is what would happen if I paid for 4 people, though on a long enough time horizon (decades?) it might work out the same in the end.
Also much easier when you're rich than when you're not.
I don't want to have to worry about my friend's finances when inviting them out (I want to grab sushi with Irene, but can she can afford it?).
They can pick a cheaper place or invite me over for a home-cooked meal if they can't afford to invite me out to a nice restaurant.
I work in tech while most of my close friends are still students, the point is to be able to do nice (more expensive) things with them, which we could never do if we always split the bill.
Try that with a group of 8-12 people, especially if they all want to be charged different amounts. Some places will do it, but many wont. A lot easier for one person to pay, and others to pay them back with cash (or one of the million free payment apps like Venmo).
But I still like splitting check much more. It allows me to spend/not spend how I want regardless of whether I am least or most willing one to pay for more expensive things. If I drink/eat a lot I pay a lot and I don't have to feel bad about somebody else paying it. And if I want to save money, I don't drink and don't have to worry about friend eating a lot.
"can we split for this pizza delivery?"
"can we do an iou for my friend who forgot their card?"
"can we split this utility bill?"
I think it's simple common courtesy that the person extending the invite picks up the check.
Outside of my family, I've also had friends from relatively poor backgrounds insist on paying for lunch or drinks before. And I've had wealthy friends act extremely petty down to the penny. So overall I've found it's hard or impossible to generalize too much.
Social norms and expectations are the fiction here, not the money itself.
This app won't get much transaction in Canada though- in Toronto at least most waiters easily handle individual bills for groups. I was at a party of 12 or so the other day- no issues will the bills, everyone paid for what they ordered. Better software, or maybe better wait staff, whatever it is, it works.
In fact, if anything, the small places that do their cheques on paper with pen are likely not to split anything.
Plenty of places will give you a hard time if you try to split a bill. Kinton ramen refuses to split for parties larger than 4 (and is completely inflexible on this)
What's good in North York?
In college I found it way more tedious to try and "keep-even" with classmates. Combine that with any sort of gossip around "they always shortchange" (maybe they're not good at tax+tip mental calcs), and I'm all for removing uncertainty from friendly transactions.
I most definitely do _not_ allow venmo to share my transaction to my social circle. That seems just silly.
The only time you might be able to get away with it is because you're going to order the 24oz sirloin and don't want to put that on other people. But that's a statement in a different direction and could come off as elitest or insulting.
Pay for what you order lessens this awkwardness.
However, like a potluck or dinner club, check roulette works great with groups you regularly eat with since it is distributed exactly according to the bill. I have groups that I eat with 30-50 times a year.
The fact that there is no more rounding is a better default that we no longer must put any thought into. It's more convenient. I fail to see how it harms the relationship in a way that's "petty".
This also completely leaves out the inconvenience of planning a large gathering for friends and fronting all the money yourself. Yes, it may feel "petty" to be reminded to pay your share, but imagine if 12 people all owed you $50. I say it's petty to need to be reminded.
Please, someone explain to me how splitting expenses is a negative thing. How is it petty? How is it more "transaction" and less "relationship"?
You have some potato chips. ("13 chips" goes on your tally.) You use the toilet twice, flushing both times. ("7 gallons of water" goes on your tally.) You're a bit hot, so I turn up the air conditioning. (I need to break out the calculator, but "+$0.63 for AC" also goes on your tally.) You tell me about a sad movie you watched recently. (This reminds me of a family problem I am having, which is mentally taxing. Since I'll likely need an anxiety pill, I add a fraction of the prescription cost to your tally.) You suggest a walk in the park; we go out. Walking makes me thirsty, so I buy a bottle of water. (But since walking was your idea, I add "1 bottle of water" to your tally.)
Do any of the above come across as petty - or absurd - to you? If so, then that will give you some idea of how someone might feel that splitting social meal expenses down to the penny - and with a written record, to boot - feels transactional. The point is everyone has a threshold where this kind of Venmo'ing behavior goes from innocently equitable to distrustfully penny-pinching.
Venmo'ing someone can be the equivalent of saying, "I don't trust that our relationship will proceed in terms that will average out in such a way that is fair to me." Insisting on Venmo'ing is a lot like insisting that your significant other tell you their email password. If you have to insist this in all cases, maybe rethink your relationship?
Going out to a restaurant with a group is not the same thing, though. If there are three people eating at a moderately priced restaurant and one person picks up the tab, it's not petty to request reimbursement.
In a cash world, it would be petty to demand exact change because of the extra effort it requires to produce it. In an automatic payments world, it's no extra effort on either side.
How is this portrayed as a bad thing in the article? This solution to this problem is the ONLY reason I use Venmo. Perhaps the author was always the one ordering steak and misses his old friend-subsidized lifestyle.
It takes some of the humanity out of the time spent together. Being generous with each other is part of how friendships and other relations are formed.
Among friends, boiling it down to a precise transaction is petty. If a friend is abusing this approach, that says something about both him and your friendship.
Luckily around here a lot of places have set menus and are all-you-can-drink including alcohol which simplifies things a lot.
Also, per NYT:
""More supportively, Noam Waksman, a 24-year-old who works in digital marketing in New York, said he has “been called out by friends before, for charging my girlfriend for a meal,” which they had spotted on Venmo.""
This is an interesting dynamic - normally the quasi-transactional stuff in dating is not made so explicit. A friend who wrote a web app like Splitwise/Bluechips about ten years back reported that he quickly stopped working on it because "girlfriends hated it".
They do make it super easy to find the setting "default audiences for future transactions: private" plus "past transactions: make to private" and I would wildly speculate it is interesting that many people don't think about whether or not they should do that.
The company was acquired, along with BrainTree, by Paypal to bolster their mobile and API-driven payments in the present age.
It didn't really matter that those mostly happened to people moving 5-6 figures, most of the millenials I know actively avoid paypal as a result.
You may as well ask why anyone uses Facebook when Google+ had better features on launch (like post visibility granularity).
In Europe, given a bank account number, you can put money into it (this is how "giros" work).
This fundamental difference in banking system has caused endless pain for the US and its hyperlocal banking system. Canada overcame this by having a home grown debit card system expand into online payments.
I'm sorry, what? The default is to make all of my transactions public? What the absolute living f---.
When I scroll through my Venmo feed, all I see is "Mike paid Jen for pizza".
In the old days it could take as long to split the bill as to eat for a double digit dinner party. Not to mention cheapskates who conveniently forget beverages and appetizers.
A quick google later: https://qz.com/687395/venmo-is-turning-our-friends-into-pett...
> Ms. Pennoyer agreed and recalled childhood taxi rides, when two adults would fight to treat the other
That still happens around here. (Well, we don't really have many Taxis around here, but it happens with meals at restaurants and such. I can recall occasions not too long ago where friends and I would all try and sneakily pay for the meal before the others noticed.)
My wife and I lived in SF for a while and stuff like that is part of the reason we came back.
(I also find keeping my entertainment budget "cash only" really helps me think critically about what I want to buy)
I remember being similarly surprised at the 'down to the last penny' bill-splitting when I first got to the US, but, as a lot of people remark on in other threads, many of the social gatherings weren't really very long term (e.g. a random collection of Bell Labs interns).
I'm sure that there are good reasons people act this way, but the impression that I have to fight down when someone acts like this that you're either cheap, broke or paranoid about being taken advantage of. I think there are occasions where everyone needs to get a little more fine-grained (especially not doing the thing where non-drinkers subsidize drinkers) but the amount of time some people fritter away on these calculations makes me wonder what their time is worth...
The same is true in the US. Note the ages and geographic locations of the people mentioned in this article.
Among well-off middle-aged (40+) Americans, in my experience it's more typical for people to compete to pay the ENTIRE bill, every single time, rather than attempting to share. Generally it's bad form to seem like you're competing to pay the bill, but very socially desirable to be known as someone who will pay the bill (and thus must have the money to do so).
However, their scam protection (https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/19/15997768/venmo-scam-fake-...) has room for improvement..
Yes, maybe I'm generalizing a bit too much, but you're usually asked if the bill will be split if you're obviously looking like a couple. I'm leaning towards preferring that way. I've no problems buying friends a beer or two, but a) I don't want to be overthinking what I am gonna eat and drink if the bill will be split evenly (like in other countries) and b) sometimes there's really people I don't want to subsidize (e.g. coworkers instead of friends).
https://github.com/AustinWise/DinnerKillPoints/
The heart of the system is a bill splitter:
https://github.com/AustinWise/DinnerKillPoints/blob/db54eec9...
And some simple graph algorithms to analyze the debt-graph and render the results with GraphViz:
https://github.com/AustinWise/DinnerKillPoints/blob/db54eec9...
I also suspect this author writes off anecdotal info, not actual data.
Take his comparison to libertarianism. Anyone who studies the actual political platform/ideology of libertarians know that describing it as "every man for himself" is a gross oversimplification. I'm not a libertarian myself but I know it doesn't discourage generosity or philanthropy.
Such lazy references make me think the author heard someone riffing about Venmo at a bar and decided to write rant.
What's next? I gotta idea! Let's get the app to ask for net promoter scores ...
Would you recommend this friend to a friend ... no=1 yes=10
It also just makes sense. I send and receive text, photos, videos, and now money from friends in one place.
Nickel-and-dining was a problem in the days of loose change, where counting small change was a huge hassle. With Venmo this problem simply does not exist. On the other hand, I would say that payments and reimbursements between friends accurate to the penny on Venmo reflects well on you as a conscientious person.
I never heard of Venmo before this article! How did it end up on the HN front page?
I've found a lot of us startup brands missed the boat invading Canada and let eBay eat their lunch here. Kijiji beat Craigslist for example.
Starting at a low $2.63 per week.
I thought that was funny.
Beer, however, is when you get to be charitable.
I expect most other uses of Venmo in the USA to be supplanted by Zelle over time.
Could be a cultural thing. Most of my social circles involve Latin American people, which is quite a mindset difference from the standard European / American mindset.
Though, even with my European friends this does not happen. I don't mind having paid more than one of my friends at the end of the evening, it'll even out eventually.
We are not doing down-to-the-penny nonsense because that would be silly and we are not dunning our friends because that would be awful.
The only assholes are the ones who freeload often. venmo keeps everyone in check.
What is your neck of the woods, partner?
I must not be a true milennial (29) .The new hip social networks don’t make sense to me or don’t work. Not only that but if this is a feature of Vennmo I’ll stay with only transferring cash to people with boring old Chase Quickpay with a bank account I don’t have to pay for without Venmo fees.
Edit: Sorry I should have read up on this.
I think this is less "not a hip millennial" and more "commenting on something you don't understand". Venmo doesn't have fees.
The reason everyone started using venmo is because it predates anything even remotely as usable (try getting bank account numbers from 15 people at a dinner). The introduction of usable p2p transfer by eg banks was motivated by venmo's success.