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Comment by tinyhouse | Hacker News Reader

Smart. But is it too late? Payment apps such as Venmo and others became very popular in recent years. Everyone already has one installed on their phone and connected to their bank account. Although at least Venmo is such a crappy and stupid app that maybe it's not too late.

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.

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You might be in a bubble. Article mentions India and Brazil, where people still prefer cash transactions and payment apps are not at all common. Introducing payment service in chat app people already use will blow away competition. I don't like it one bit, but WhatsApp is posed to make big impact on payment system.

Payment apps are very popular in India, especially in urban India. Most people have one of Paytm, Google Pay or PhonePe installed.

But everyone has WhatsApp installed

I agree. I always thought this was the killer function that Whatsapp needed. Now, I think it will be a formidable competitor to everyone else.

Also, I'd like to add the sheer number of people that are on Whatsapp is incredible.

From what I see in my circles. WhatsApp is good for chat but no one doing any serious financial transactions through it.

Financial transactions is mostly dominated by Paytm, GPay etc.

My home country, African country, is in big trouble when it comes to the economy. It is possible to "send" money or goods home. You just head to advertised stores in your resident country and hand your money over. Your relatives at home can go collect money/goods from a store that's part of the network. No systems involved except WhatsApp.

I heard this situation mentioned as big use-case for bitcoin. Is bitcoin actually used to send money back to Africa families?

Also, what is the network you mention? Is this official WhatsApp payment system or some group of stores using WhatsApp as ledger?

The more technical folk would agree with you. I have heard many say this situation is ripe for bitcoin but in practice I have yet to encounter a person using bitcoin in my home country.

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.

Thank you for clarifying. I'm not advocating for bitcoin, just fact-checking their (for me the strongest) argument for wider adoption.

Venmo is irrelevant in (all?) most of the markets where Whatsapp is utterly dominating. In February it was reported that the platform has 2 billion active users.

Right. But all these countries have a popular payment app similar to Venmo that all people use. For example, in Israel where whatsapp is as popular as in Brazil, there's an app called Bit everyone is using, where you can send money using phone numbers. I'm sure India and Brazil have similar apps.

I seriously doubt that, I've lived in 3 of the countries (fairly large ones) where WhatsApp is THE communications and in all of those, at least to my knowledge, most (mostly young) people send money electronically through banks, sometimes more modern digital versions like Nubank in Brazil, but there's no all-encompassing default solution.

But in the US banking is very archaic and so bank transfers are not instant and I think even involve a fee unlike in most countries

FYI there is no similar equivalent here in the UK, so I wouldn't assume...

Unlike a lot of countries, the UK has free and near-instant bank transfers which seem to be a de facto standard for things like splitting bills with friends.

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.

> Unlike a lot of countries

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).

Canada does. See my other comment about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23558111

There is no equivalent in Brazil yet, not with any significant market share.

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.

I might be in a bit of a bubble here (Porto Alegre), but all my friends except for one who's a tinfoil-on-head privacy nut use PicPay. Even more hipster-y restaurants/bars are starting to accept payment over it.

Anecdotal evidence, I know, but lacking proper studies...

Here in Florianópolis PicPay is absolutely unheard of. I know it by name but have never used or heard about anyone using it.

In São Paulo it seems PicPay is more popular with younger people, as you can open an account being 16 or older. Nubank you have to be at least 18, probably as it mainly is a credit card.

I don’t have an account, nor have seen somebody using it, though. I’m totally outside their target group.

In India there are multiple apps like GooglePay, Phonepe, Paytm. All these are popular and widely used, Whatsapp was trying to get into payments in India for a long time but unable to launch because of regulations.

UPI payments are very popular in India and GooglePay really did a good job in getting the market share here in India.

Venmo only works in the United States as US resident and with a US bank account. Swish only works in Sweden if you have a Swedish bank account, Bluecode only works in Germany and Austria.

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.

Where I think Facebook has an edge is also owning Instagram.

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.

We don't have Venmo or anything similar in Mexico. I don't know if it's because of regulations or what, but nobody has developed anything similar. And Whatsapp is huge here.

I live in a country where Whatsapp dominates and never heard of Venmo. So I guess it's US specific. The world is larger than that.

WeChat, whatsapps larger competitor, had the feature for at least 6 years now, and it is at the core of its monetization.

What’s the switching cost? If all your friends are suddenly available on your most essential communication app, what’s the reason not to give a try. And boom you’re locked in

Switching cost is not high, I agree. The main thing is connecting whatsapp to your bank and credit card accounts. Some people might be hesitant. But there's another issue that is not so much related to switching cost. Whatsapp is a communication app. People mostly use it to communicate with friends and family. Not everyone wants that any stranger who they ever send or receive money from would now have their phone number and can now see when they are online and text/call them on their main communication app. (you can obv block users to prevent that but still). Although tbh I think this wouldn't be a big issue for the cultures where whatsapp is currently very popular as they are already using it to communicate with everyone.

I don’t think the sending money to businesses feature will require you to disclose your phone number. WeChat doesn’t, and that app is a privacy nightmare.

I have the feeling Germany is mostly Paypal dominated.

fyi, Venmo is owned by PayPal. I think the reason it became more popular with individuals in the US is that with Venmo it's easier than PayPal to send and receive money without paying a fee.

My impression is that in Germany (and lots of other European countries) people just directly send money via SEPA. Usually that's free and all you need is the IBAN number of the recipient. And with banks that participate in SEPA Instant a transfer doesn't take longer than a few seconds.

Definitely, when I ask how to send money to people anywhere in Europe I just get an IBAN in response, which I use in my banking app.

I'd never even heard of Venmo (UK).

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