Venmo continue to shine for PayPal | Hacker News Reader

Venmo continue to shine for PayPal

businessinsider.com

30 pointsBonge27 comments

The article doesn't mention Square Cash at all – I'm curious to know how it compares in terms of success/market share.

Personally I greatly prefer Cash. It's an excellently designed app – simple, straight-to-the-point, no superfluous features. I don't really understand why people prefer Venmo.

Because of network effects. Venmo is easy enough to use, and most of my friends use it. In fact, I was introduced to it by a friend who doesn't work in the tech industry.

You have to understand that for most people, learning a new system is a hassle that they would rather avoid. If Venmo continues to just work, I doubt people would switch to anything else for their payment/ money transfer needs.

Venmo came first and there is no reason to switch.

Cash used to offer instant automatic withdrawals to your bank. Now they delay it by a couple business days (and charge for instant), but at least it's automatic. Venmo, I have to manually withdraw every time I get money.

I assume you meant deposit, not withdraw right?

Nope, withdraw. I don't want to let Venmo hold my money for free. I prefer to have it in my bank account.

I've found that PayPal's business practices are enough reason: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-takes...

Surely parent comment starting with "Venmo came first" indicates that they don't see PayPal and Venmo as competing in the same space.

PayPal owns Venmo, and Venmo's profits help sustain PayPal. PayPal's business practices have rightly come under heavy scrutiny, which means that, for quite a few people, there is a compelling "reason to switch" in spite of the fact that it "came first".

The article notes that Venmo is currently operating at a loss.

Ah, I wasn't aware PayPal owned Venmo.

A friend attempted to send me money via Square Cash without asking me my preference. Square Cash can only be used at mobile app. You cannot use a website at all (at least not last year). No thank you.

They've had a website (https://cash.me/) for as long as I can remember.

How do you sign up? There is no option on the website.

I use Venmo at least weekly, but I didn't think it was owned by PayPal. But then I looked it up and saw that Venmo was bought by Braintree in 2012, and Braintree was bought by PayPal in 2013.

TIL.

It's also right there in the app btw. Open the sidebar and look at the bottom (iOS)

The one thing Venmo needs to really seal the deal is splitting. If Venmo could combine with splitwise, my life would be greatly improved. Venmo is the only app that enough people use to actually pull this off IMO. It seems like they are clearly the dominant payment app.

Venmo already works pretty seamlessly with Splitwise.

After a shared restaurant bill yesterday evening, one friend suggested to another paying her back by making some sort of Chase-based electronic payment. The other friend hadn't tried it but was willing to give it a go.

The one is already a Chase account holder, and I think/suspect the other may be.

Like it or not (and I'm no fan of Chase and the BigBank quasi-oligopoly), this is going to be the future of payments. Unless someone significantly lowers the bar to alternatives.

Sure, they might have any number of other apps on their smart phones and accounts to choose from. But, banking ends up being the entre to having the/a service on their phone, tied to their individual financial services and resources.

"Everyone" does banking. This is the point/vehicle of mass adoption.

look up Zelle. it's the US bank version of venmo. it will be integrated into the bank app or standalone and it's instant payment. a few banks already have it. i know mine does

I remember when these guys were getting their start, I was working for Best Buy at SXSW ages ago. They were super passionate about their product and getting everyone to try it.

I'm glad they 'made it', I still use the product as well.

I know people in Canada that got US bank accounts just so they could use the real payments apps and tech instead of the poor local offering.

It's a testament of how good it is.

The weird thing to me is that PayPal accounts are wholly separate from Venmo accounts. I already had my PayPal account linked to my bank, and I had to do this tedious process all over again when I connected Venmo to my bank. Pretty lame considering it's the same company.

Someone at Venmo/PayPal had to fight really hard to keep accounts separate, and they deserve a ton of credit.

No one ever had said "I'm glad to have this new Yahoo account to login to Flickr."

I love Venmo more than you can ever know. It's one of the few ways I can actually pay people back since I literally never have cash.

If people don't have Venmo, they just don't get paid back.

So your debt becomes their problem. Nice.

Sounds like a shitty way of ensuring your friends have Venmo.

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