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I share your distaste for Venmo, but I've often found it inconvenient to get everyone on Google Wallet or similar. You can actually set your privacy to never allow public posts when sending or receiving money.

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Same boat here, I greatly prefer Square Cash (money goes directly between checking accounts so there is no second step to empty your balance), but the network effects of Venmo are too strong at this point. The all-transactions-private setting is easy to turn on.

> money goes directly between checking accounts

Some see this as a disadvantage of Square Cash--they say individual transactions clog their checking account statements, they prefer to withdraw a consolidated amount from their Venmo balance.

You're free to do that these days if you'd like with Square Cash… it lets you build a balance on their system just the way Venmo does. But it's not required and I personally disable that.

I don't like to have random balances on money-transfer startups' system, especially since it's uninsured.

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