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Comment by Scaevolus | Hacker News Reader

"Square has taken aim at the much larger goal of providing a tech-savvy alternative to the big banks, expanding out from payments to lending and online deposits."

Note also that Square is not actively losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year, which is a point in favor of its value.

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But Square's been "taking aim" at new markets for years: remember their Google Wallet competitor? Or what about Square Cash? I also remember them launching tons of new services (e.g. appointment scheduling) a few years ago, is there still momentum there?

Square's had a firm hold on hip small businesses for half a decade, I'm still not convinced they can use that as leverage to build profitable services.

These points are addressed clearly and interestingly in TFA.

Square Cash is currently #38 on the chart for top free apps in Apple's app store. No other financial apps above it. Might be good momentum with that product at least.

I'm curious what that actually means in real download numbers now. Remember in iOS 11, iOS games were split out into a seperate top chart, which I imagine means waaaaaaaaaaay less downloads are now needed to break the App Store's top 200 ranking for all other app types. Worth bearing in mind if using this as evidence of momentum.

I wonder if that momentum will last when Apple Pay Cash rolls out next month - why install a third party app to send money to friends when you can do it via iMessage?

'Venmo' itself has become a verb rather than just a service so I doubt either of them have the necessary momentum to take these services to anything more than nominal levels of volume relative to the market lead

What's a Venmo?

https://www.clickondetroit.com/consumer/how-venmo-became-a-v...

> "Venmo has essentially eliminated the use of checks for our generation"

I've literally never heard of Venmo before now

Me neither. I googled it, out of curiosity myself. I was confusing it with BevMo, a retail chain for beverages et al.

My gut feeling is that whether you are familiar with the popular cash sharing apps really depends on your social circle. Among young people/students etc, not surprisingly I see a TON of Venmo users. Among adults with steady reasonable paying jobs, not so much. I've seen Venmo reguarly used as a Verb in social media too.

I know for me personally I'm far more likely to say "you get it next time" than bill my friends for some share of an outing. If it's sufficiently expensive that this doesn't make sense I'd just split the check. If I was younger and still a student I can absolutely see the appeal though.

Because some of them are green bubbles

Just wanted to note that Square Cash is also directly integrated into Snapchat and Facebook Messenger.

Zelle, the bank consortium competing against Square Cash (and Venmo), is built into most major bank apps now.

https://www.zellepay.com/partners

While I think Square has some momentum, I believe the financial services industry as a whole is going to overshadow their Cash offering.

Anecdote, but Cash is just as popular as Venmo among my friends/acquaintances/colleagues(mid-late 20s, pacific northwest). Everyone has both installed because you never know who's going to prefer which one or just happen to open that one first.

Venmo isn't obviously profitable either, last I read PayPal was still trying to sell it to B2B merchants. Seems like more of the same problem -- lots of momentum, little monetization.

Well, how do you monetize such a service without Google Wallet, Square Cash, and <insert new entrant of the week> eating you alive? Everybody is running away from Visa/Mastercard processing and toward ACH (Dwolla & Popmoney) or debit based systems (Google Wallet, Venmo), and any fees essentially force whatever volume you have to jump to a competitor.

Worst case, you'll see people using online bill pay to mail eachother's banks checks as that is free and low effort. People just don't want to pay to move money friend to friend, and the US is an anomaly with our extremely high credit card processing charges, where we're at 1.5% to 2% in interchange, the rest of the world is below 1%.

That's very interesting, among my social circle (low 20's Northeast New England Area) Venmo has an implicit monopoly on the service. I doubt any of my non-cs friends have even heard of Square's offering.

Venmo is definitely king in Seattle, but people really don't understand how risky Venmo is for Craigslist and Facebook transactions. Since its F2F, if the person who sent you money contacts Venmo, that money will be returned to them without the ability for the receiver to get a word in edgewise.

Really? I've tried to contact Venmo in the past about an errant send and they told me I was out of luck.

Contact your bank and reverse the debit transaction, like an errant check, you have rights when it comes to reversing a transaction. Most fraud is committed during the settlement period though, while Venmo holds the money: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2015/09/venm...

Some of the trendier merchents have Square in my neighborhood. I'm in NW Maine. I just bought some alpaca wool and the nice lady swiped my card through a Square device attached to her phone. The pie lady takes Square too. I think the new coffee shop, down in the village, now has a real merchant account, but they did use Square. I've never even seen Venmo.

Err... I'm old, but we have hip and trendy tourists?

Ah well... Another anecdote for ya.

I believe Venmo is squarely in the market of peer-to-peer money. IIRC I don't believe they have any business offerings.

Square, meanwhile, is offering both business and peer-to-peer options.

It might be a generational thing, but it does seem like Venmo has cornered the p2p market.

That would absolutely explain why I've never seen it. In my generation, if I invite people out, I expect to pay the bill. There is no bill splitting. If I'm paying someone, I've probably got cash.

Yeah, I even have a landline. I did mention I'm old. ;-)

They must be popular in pockets of people here and there, because I've never used either of them or seen them in the wild. I had to look up what Venmo was a week ago when someone mentioned it here. As far as I can tell, it's a "hipper" version of PayPal except it's not supported by web stores or anywhere else I might buy something. So cool I guess--I'm probably just an out of touch old fogey--I don't use Snapchat either.

Venmo - which in my experience is ubiquitous - is for sending money to and from friends and acquaintances (often for things like dinners, drinks, tickets etc), not for e-commerce (although my landlord takes venmo). Using PayPal would definitely be an 'old guy' tell.

I use Cash far more than I use Venmo these days. Like maybe 90% Cash 10% Venmo.

Every week I see more friends and local small businesses using Square Cash. Ever month I see more local shops using Square POS with the fancy iPad holders and readers, etc. The feature set for those of us who use it to send invoices continues to grow, too, making them really a great solution.

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