WhatsApp has introduced a feature that allows users to send and receive money
iafrikan.com
iafrikan.com
The chinese WeChat example shown us how convenient a popular chat app coupled with a payment system can be, and how quickly an entire society can adopt it.
I think this feature should be considered as a threat to users, and be avoided, while actively and strongly, but respectfully, advising people around us to do the same.
It's my privileged position to be able to do so.
Doesn't mean I should not advice for it though. It's an important message, it should be spread, as long as we are not guilt tripping people.
Do you think that they longer are part of it or its successor?
But I doubt we'll get another Snowden anytime soon to prove it.
Can't wait for this to available in my location. "Threat to users" be dammed.
Personally I use https://stripe.com/.
Last customer was in India, and it was hard for him to wire me money. Stripe made it a breeze, I created an invoice, enter his mail, and he just paid using his credit card.
The fees are a bit high, so the question is more "how much inconvenience do I think is worth this moral stand?".
And there is no universal answer to this question, since moral is arbitrary, and I don't accept the inconvenience in many other avenues.
Good luck
This is highly deceptive framing. PRISM was a passive cable tapping program. Companies weren't "participating" in it as much as they were victims of it.
Facebook was targeted by PRISM and rapidly worked to mitigate as soon as they knew about it, just like every other cloud service provider that was victimized by cable tapping under that program.
But for what we know, they didn't have direct access, they made requests to the companies.
Wikipedia states "PRISM collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#E...
CNET says:
"Sources challenge reports alleging National Security Agency is 'tapping directly into the central servers.' Instead, they say, the spy agency is obtaining orders under process created by Congress."
https://www.cnet.com/news/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-...
Which makes sense.
Why pay the cost for a huge and complicated setup when a cheap piece of paper can do the job, and the gag order make it as secret?
You can find an archive of the article here:
https://www.webcitation.org/mainframe.php
Thankfully, the NSA slides were directly included by wikipedia, so we don't have to hunt them down:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/...
We can see that PRISM targets (or should I say, partners) list contains at least: Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, YouTube, AOL, Skype Apple.
As usual, this is what we know. Meaning what could be extracted, proven, communicated and accepted by the public. A pretty big filter already.
I have no doubt there are innumerable FB employees who will defend privacy and security. Zuckerberg doesn't care, and will sell his users out the second it impacts the bottom line or offends the government FB is in bed with (go listen to the hot mic recording between Zuckerberg and Angela Merkel, for example).
FB behavior didnt show any reason to believe he would have had a change of heart ever since.
This is probably also a pretty smooth intro to Libra. Start with "we'll send X pounds via Libra instant transfer: £X = XL", end with "You have XL in your account. Withdraw to £".
The way it works is the sender signs into their online banking and initiates an e-transfer. The sender doesn't need the recipient's banking details, only a phone number or email address. The recipient follows the link in the email/SMS message they received, signs into their online banking, and selects the account to deposit the funds into. The entire process is immediate.
If the recipient has registered that email address or phone number to auto-deposit into a specific account, all the sender has to do is type in the amount and hit Send. Otherwise, they will have to create a short question with a secret one-word answer that the recipient needs to answer correctly.
How could WhatsApp payments be better than that? Not everyone has WhatsApp, and if you want to use it you'll need to go through the hassle of linking your bank account.
In China, where mobile payments are ubiquitous, the process of linking your bank account is just typing in your name and account number, and entering the one time pass code your bank just sent over SMS. Now you can pay for everything - not just individuals on your contact list, but literally anyone who also has the app installed - just by scanning QR code and entering your PIN. The recipient doesn't need to sign in or confirm anything, it's just done.
Don't underestimate the convenience of this setup. I do like that Interac eTransfer doesn't force people to install a proprietary app to transfer money, but can you really see it replacing cash in a grocery store or helping people split the bill at a bar?
Splitting the bill at a restaurant? Absolutely. I use it for that all the time. That's mostly what I use it for, because it's so quick and easy.
First everyone needs to log in to internet banking, then they need to find out the email address of whoever is picking up the tab, then they need to wait for that person to receive their email notifications, then that person needs to log into their online banking to accept each transaction one by one... With Alipay or WeChat it is much more seamless, and the whole process can be completed in literally a few seconds.
It might not seem like much of a difference (a few minutes vs a few seconds), but once people get used to that convenience, I can't see them wanting to go back.
I guess they've been planning/testing this for a while.
https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/whatsapp-pay...
Game streaming, dating, selling used shit, payments, workplace "social" platform, video hosting&subscribing, etc.
They're on their way.
However I think Status and cryptocurrency are nowhere near ready for mass-adoption. I don't use Status, because it hasn't implemented private payments yet. Unmasked payments on the blockchain can completely compromise your privacy.
[1] https://decrypt.co/25629/status-wants-to-be-the-worlds-most-...
This just shows again how slow big companies are. The idea of allowing payments within whatsapp has been talked about for at least 3 years now. They are only now starting to experiment with it.
Incidentally I tried to use Venmo while in the US, but the app was geo-blocked so I couldn’t install it with a Google Play account set to the UK.
Interestingly, you might actually have that a bit backwards - North America is the only place I know of that doesn't have free (or with a fee of a few cents), near-instant bank transfers. It actually surprised me how backwards the banking system seemed the first time I was in the US (coming from West Africa).
The closest thing we have is Nubank, which is a mobile-only bank, but even that is not nearly as universal as WhatsApp.
Essentially everyone with a phone number uses WhatsApp, but payment apps so far have been restricted mostly to the 20s ~ early 30s audiences in terms of adoption.
Anecdotal evidence, I know, but lacking proper studies...
I don’t have an account, nor have seen somebody using it, though. I’m totally outside their target group.
UPI payments are very popular in India and GooglePay really did a good job in getting the market share here in India.
I don't know worldwide, but in for example Colombia, it is basically the primary and some cases only store front for a lot of products, small manufacturers and service providers.
Facebooks can control the entire sales cycle from discovery to close.
Also, I'd like to add the sheer number of people that are on Whatsapp is incredible.
Financial transactions is mostly dominated by Paytm, GPay etc.
Also, what is the network you mention? Is this official WhatsApp payment system or some group of stores using WhatsApp as ledger?
Network probably wasn't the most clear word to use. I meant any one of the physical stores in home country that work with the agent in the resident country. My observation is an agent from a specific area in home country will work with the stores from his area in his home country. He or she collects "real" money in the resident country and the shop owners provide the money/goods in home country. All this happens through regular WhatsApp. Not the new money feature.
That fragmentation doesn't matter too much if you're a resident of one country and don't travel too much, but it becomes a real issue if you travel or for some other reason reside in another country. For example, Sweden is mostly cashless and people use Swish to pay each other or to pay for goods at smaller merchants. Without a Swish account (that requires a Swedish bank account) you're locked out and can't pay anyone or receive payments.
For Europa EMPSA (https://empsa.org/) will hopefully make that situation a little bit better, as it would enable mobile cross-border payments within the European Union. But that project is still in the early stages and a platform like WhatsApp that's able to provide frictionless, cheap, cross-border payments looks definitely like something that could be successful.
Whatsapp is used in half of the world, do I guess handling payments might be harder, unless it's for US only.
My point is that allowing payments within a single market is a pretty old feature and Whatsapp is late to the party.