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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

When I first created a Venmo account, I was shocked to see users' payments flowing through my feed and immediately found a way to make my payments private.

But I could never find a way to effectively unlink the social media account (FB) that I had used to find my first friend/payee. I think I unlinked the account, but I still see payments from all the people that Venmo made me follow as a result of linking the now-unlinked FB account.

I haven't used the app in a long time, and I wonder if this mass-unfollow feature has been added. I know they think that people open Venmo to check their feed, but some people find the public feed creepy, and it makes me use the app less in favor of alternatives.

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I'm utterly perplexed that Venmo is even a thing.

When I first started hearing about it maybe 5-6 years ago, I just figured, I already have PayPal and Square Cash, I'm too old, nobody I know uses Venmo, why bother.

I've mostly ignored that it existed except occasionally hearing (usually younger) folks talking about it.

A couple of months ago I was telling some people at work that I'm too old for it, and Square Cash works well enough for me, and commented that I can't see how a newcomer could be any easier than just having the money go directly into my bank account.

When a coworker informed me that Venmo payments stay in your account, my exasperated reply was "wait, it's WORSE than Square Cash? It's like going back to PayPal?" Well, you can imagine how incredulous I was when I found out that Venmo IS PayPal, just with different branding.

For the past 5 years I've been assuming Venmo is something new and cool that "the kids" are using, but I'm too out of touch to bother, and suddenly I find out it's a rebranding of PayPal with all of the drawbacks of it. It blows my mind that something caught traction that is functionally worse than the competitor of the product it's a rebranding of!

I imagine my feelings about Venmo reflect a lot of peoples':

Basically it was the first way to send money on mobile phones that wasn't miserable or charged fees so everyone started using it. By the time PayPal owned it it was already popular.

Everyone wanted to easily send money for at least, like, 10 years before that. It was the first mainstream option and it still felt really late. (PayPal already existed but was... disliked. I think because of lots of horror stories about customer service, and maybe not having a convenient app interface, or requiring a bank account connection?)

The competitors are all equivalent now (FB, Google, whatever), but I would never embrace using a FB or Google product exclusively so Venmo feels like a 'neutral third-party option' , at least to an extent, which we can use as the 'default' payments app.

The Bank's versions (Zelle, etc) are way too coupled to banks and too big-corporation to be excited about.

If there was, say, a startup that did exactly the same thing as Venmo but wasn't affiliated with a big company (PayPal), I think everyone would happily use it. If it was, like, a B-corp or non-profit that gives proceeds to charity, I think everyone would jump ship instantly.

Basically I don't care at all about Venmo's social features, I just want to send money and prefer not to support a big corporation or give more data to FB or Google. I bet lots of people are of similar mind.

I still don't get it. My bank's app lets me send money to people via interac e-transfer. It's kind of a pain in the ass to add a new payee each time, but the payee doesn't need to have any app themselves. It works through email and the bank's website. It's free too. What does venmo have that isn't covered by that?

> I still don't get it. My bank's app lets me send money to people via interac e-transfer.

You don't get it that most banks do not do that? I am unsure why you are confused about that?

Every bank in Canada does it, even the tiny credit unions. It's common throughout Europe. I don't know about Australia, but they probably have it too. I don't know, just another example of Americans being backwards and thinking everyone else has the same problems. I seriously can't believe it's 2018 and this isn't mandatory for every bank yet.

Australia just got PayId this year which means you can send any amount of money to anybody who signs up via their banks and receive money in seconds.

Until last year you had to wait up to 3 days to do an interbank transfer but not anymore. (same bank transfer would usually clear within the day)

I have used it quite a bit since it was released and I have to say that it does the job. The only downside is that it is tied to your phone number and I am not really sure what the process is if you want to change it.

Perhaps it's the people's problem for not demanding a better system.

Many other countries in the world bank transfers are easy and free (within the country). I can transfer to anyone from my phone, and do all the time. No apps or special services needed.

IMHO America likes to hinge these arguments on "our system is too old, we're just too big, etc.", but when it comes down to it are just excuses to allow banks to continue fleecing their customers.

> It’s kind of a pain in the ass to add a new payer each time

This is one reason Venmo is successful. Paying someone is easy. Receiving money is easy. No one wants to spend 5 minutes setting up a payee on their phone when they’re splitting a dinner bill.

I don't know where you live, but most banks in the US don't have that, and if they do, the UI and messaging is often terrible.

In fact Venmo's popularity, in my mind, is directly related to US banks finally making a push for free user-to-user transfers (even if their apps still need massive work).

So Square Cash then?

At this point there are too many network effects around venmo, if you're splitting the BBQ with 5 people and 4 have venmo and you don't, it's not as convenient for the requester. That's why I got venmo initially, and now it's super easy to request money from friends and 2nd degree friends, since my network is all venmo. I know 1 person who uses square cash and he's over 40, and I know 2 or 3 less tech-literate friends who use paypal and refuse to try venmo. It's just a hassle to split costs with them because I have to do it in 2 apps instead of adding everyone to the same request in venmo.

Yep, it’s network effects. All my friends were impressed by Square Cash’s ability to instantly transfer to their bank accounts for a small fee, but nobody wants to install another cash app (and another virtual wallet) to use with just one friend.

When Apple Pay Cash came out, I was sure that it would replace Venmo, but even after all my friends updated to iOS 11 they continued to use Venmo. I’m guessing this has something to do with Apple Pay Cash not having any way to keep track of pending payments and requests, meaning your friend will probably never pay you back for lunch if the request isn’t paid as soon as it’s sent, before getting buried in history by conversation (iOS-only is another network-effect factor, but my social group is pretty much exclusively iOS).

I feel like I'm missing something here.

If I go out somewhere with a bunch of friends, we just ask for separate checks.

I think "splitting the BBQ" as in someone is buying and cooking a bunch of food and their friends are helping with the cost.

But anyway, some restaurants don't split checks and most don't like to because it's extra work for their staff.

How does PayPal fail this use case? Or cash (the horror)?

My friends and I largely don't carry cash, and even though I typically carry a single 20 and a 100 dollar bill for emergencies, it's hard to split cash unless someone else can give you change, which requires them to carry a bunch of 5s 10s 1s (coins?).

Paypal fails like I said because of network effects. More people in my friend group have venmo than paypal (even though paypal owns both), so when it's time to pay, venmo is the default.

Nothing is inherently wrong with paypal, it's just that nobody in my group uses it. So, just plain old network effects.

People don't carry cash as much as they used to, because they don't need to, because apps can do it.

We used to do that, but splitting with an app is easier so we've gradually stopped. Especially because many restaurants don't like doing separate checks, or have a limit to how much they will split, or it just feels mean and inordinately complicated to ask the waiter to do it when we have a way to sort it out ourselves.

Works well unless:

- the restaurant doesn't do separate checks for large groups - friends ordered meals with significant variance in case, and the server wasn't initially told to keep items separated - you want to split communal items in an arbitrary fashion

Me too. This is not a problem I've ever encountered.

I use it for the fact that it's popular, of course. Worse than the fact that your balance stays in Venmo is that if you make a transaction larger than your balance, it gets paid exclusively from your bank account and doesn't clear out your balance first.

Moreover, Venmo is garbage at the simplest thing of letting me find the person I'm paying. The only way to distinguish between all the many people of the same name (profile pictures being far too small to see in the selection list) is to have the person actually tell you their exact ID. The fact that I have previously done transactions with them or that they are a once-removed transaction friend from me isn't displayed.

> Venmo IS PayPal, just with different branding

They were a startup in 2010 but got bought by PayPal in 2013.

Every generation throws their own hero up the pop charts.

Well it's PayPal without the fees.

"Friends and Family" payments are also without fees.

I can't think of any fees I've ever paid to PayPal other than for eBay transactions and the like -- though it's of course possible Venmo has different rate structures and thresholds.

Is it?

My understanding is that (other than the brand and parent ownership) as services they're quite different.

Maybe from a UI standpoint, but all of the competitors are pretty similar. Minus network effect, of course. Nobody in my network uses Venmo, for example, but apparently I'm an outlier.

With all of them, you can find a way to use it for free. Eg, if the service you use doesn't support free bank transfers, you link it with a debit card for free transfers.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/paypal-vs-google-wallet...

I had no idea you could make your payments “private” by default. Indeed you can, and you can mark all past payments as private by going (on iOS) to:

  Settings -> Privacy -> Private

and

  Settings -> Privacy -> Past Transactions -> Change All to Private

I always had feared I’d forget to set my transactions as private.

I was also shocked, and immediately set it to private. I registered using an email address (as I do for practically every online service I use) so I don't have to deal with the Facebook dimension.

However, for the handful of people I regularly send money to, I can see all of their transactions on the home screen, including business fees (which reveals the freelance rates they charge), family loans, etc. I take it they have not limited their transactions to "private".

Regardless, I am amazed that Venmo/PayPal thought sharing payment activity would be a good idea.

If it is not private it's a valid thing to use for ad targeting.

I recently went through and unfollowed 100+ people because there's still no mass-unfollow feature :(

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