Origins of Venmo (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Origins of Venmo (2014)

kortina.nyc

52 pointssaadalem23 comments

> We decided, you should be able to share this stuff, because it’s interesting

Interesting, because this is main reason I don't like Venmo, and prefer PayPal, but everyone seems to want to use Venmo. In my social circle, many people have expressed similar sentiments.

I think the main thing they hit is being able to pay your Facebook friends by entering their name, before Facebook had Facebook Pay. Come to think of it, it would have been much wiser if Facebook acquired them instead of rolling out a competing payments system.

The second point is really interesting - how instrumental was having a semi-public feed in them taking off? I use venmo b/c everyone I know has it, it has my bank info anyways, and it's easy to find people. Even now with a gazillion options I still default to venmo.

On the latter point of finding people though, a public feed has been useful. Often when I venmo someone new (ex. dinner), it's helpful to see my friends also having venmo'ed the person so I know I have the right account.

The "network" functionality, whether you use the social/feed aspect of it, does warn you if you attempt to pay someone that you've never paid before and that you have no friends in common with. That's also a good way to make sure you're paying the right person.

The funny thing is I get the warning almost every time because I only ever use Venmo with new acquaintances I'm eating with for the first time in a group setting.

Once I'm actually friends with someone we stop splitting bills and end up roughly alternating (sometimes after fighting) about who pays. Might be an Asian thing though.

I still can't figure out for the life of me why anyone uses Venmo. I tried it once and had an awful experience. For those that use it, what is the appeal over simply using PayPal? That also lets you send money to friends for free. As far as I can tell, all the differences are very much in PayPal's favor:

1. Must use mobile app to send payments. You cannot send through the website. WTF?

2. When I tried to send $250, from my Venmo balance no less, I got an opaque error about please try again later. Only through trial and error did I figure out that it would let me send up to $100, but no more.

3. Everything about the social feed aspect. Among the Venmo users I know, no one actually uses it. Everyone talks about how easy it is to turn it off. But isn't this its only differentiator? If you're going to turn it off, why not just stick with PayPal which doesn't have this annoying anti-feature in the first place?

4. I could be wrong, but I think that even if you turn the feed off, you can't hide your list of "friends" from the public.

The main value of Venmo to me is that it feels a lot less awkward than other alternatives. I think the main reason it's less awkward is because you can safely assume a friend will have it set up already (unlike with PayPal or even similar services like Facebook Pay), and because it's easy to find people.

I guess the question is something of a chicken and egg, then. Why did all your friends already set up Venmo, when it seems to be strictly worse (worse in some ways, not better in any ways) than the existing solution (Paypal)?

in 2014 I'm not sure that paypal had a nice clean simple mobile app like Venmo did. In 2014 Venmo was the best, and today I think it still fulfills its purpose quite well.

It's seamless. That's why. The use-case is small amounts of money like splitting dinner. It's super-fast. You select the four friends you want to split with, type in $400/5 and 'Request' and they get requests for $80. You're done moments after you've signed the receipt.

That makes sense. Where I live, restaurants will offer to split your bill without even being asked. So this use case didn't really occur to me.

Where I see it being used is for simple A->B transactions. E.g., items for sale in local classified ads. (I had one seller who didn't even want to take cash, Venmo only!) Or simply paying back $100 you borrowed from your friend the other night.

In such cases it seems to just be a pain in the ass.

Nothing you've pointed out is a reason to not use Venmo

1. Okay? I use venmo on my phone since there nothing that is lost from not using desktop. There are 3 buttons and a keypad to use. what else do I want?

2. That limit is probably only for brand new accounts. I started paying rent using Venmo, which initial amount FAR exceeded the total amount I've ever spent through venmo in total.

3. I'm able to ignore it and it doesn't matter. Who the hell cares.

4. I solve this by not adding friends.

The low transaction limit is likely an anti-fraud device. I am able to transfer much larger amounts than that on Venmo. I don't know how they handle KYC for this stuff. I don't recall filling in many details.

The thing is that it let me send the whole $250 in three transactions, immediately after each other. So if it's an anti-fraud device it's a questionable one at very best.

Well, Zelle needs to figure out a verification method BEFORE you send some random person money because your friend got a new phone number. With Venmo, scan their QR code and done

>We thought, “Why are we still doing this? We do everything else with our phones. We should definitely be using PayPal to pay each other back. But we don’t, and none of our friends do.”

None of my friends use any pay services. Apple pay, Venmo, Paypal, it's a crapshoot if I can find a way to pay them back. I was able to convince them to use Facebook Messenger pay because we were having a conversation in it once. We are in our 20s. I would be surprised if they had set up Apple/Google pay on their phone to pay contactless (maybe now with covid). My point is -- Venmo doesn't solve any problems it just creates another -- namely another payment system none of my peers use.

That sucks. Literally everyone I know uses Venmo.

Yeah: I (still) live in a college town, and the idea that someone doesn't use Venmo feels very alien.

Direct banking is ubiquitous in the rest of the developed world. There’s no reason for a rent-seeking third party to have a finger in the pie.

Off topic, but one major thing I found interesting moving from the U.S. to Europe was how the SEPA system here makes products like Venmo obsolete and how Venmo seems like just a bandaid on top of the archaic banking system there.

Exactly, Australia and NZ too.

College Humor did an amazing take on the public feed "social networking" feature of Venmo.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BWFLztKBrLY

I quit venmo when they went mobile only. There's no obvious way they make money, so it must be in the metadata they collect... somewhere. I can control what they see from a desktop web browser, but on mobile their app asks for far too much.

Discussed (a bit) at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7844404

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