Venmo's core value right now is that it's ubiquitous. Everyone has a Venmo account and everyone trusts it. I paid an electrician through it yesterday -- no new Fed tech is going to replace it overnight, just like Zelle didn't kill it either.
https://www.zellepay.com/press-releases/zeller-closes-2020-r... (Zelle® Closes 2020 with Record $307 Billion Sent on 1.2 Billion Transactions, Nearly 7,000 financial institutions are represented in the Zelle Network via their customers using the Zelle common mobile app, Achieving ubiquity with banks and credit unions: Nearly 500 new financial institutions of all sizes joined the Zelle Network® in 2020)
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/venmo-statistics/ (Venmo key statistics. Venmo processed $159 billion in total payment volume in 2020)
If anyone can plug into instant payments, your value as an instant payment provider that just does payments will fall rapidly.
Really looking forward to a governmental, ubiquitous solution.
The thing that makes this a bit trickier is that Zelle is transparently used under the hood by some banks to move money between accounts owned by the same person. I've moved thousands of dollars between two of my accounts with Zelle but the alternative would have been an ACH transfer or depositing a check to myself, not Venmo.
I know it's just one anecdote, but when splitting a check, my social circle always reaches for Venmo, never for Zelle. And yet I've probably moved more total money via Zelle because I occasionally use it for different, higher-value transactions.
There's some selection bias at play for different transaction types (including many where people might not even realize they're using Zelle) so we should be careful looking at only the headline numbers.
One might assume this feature will be built into banking apps as time goes on and instant payments are ubiquitous. It's already in my Chase iOS app [1]. I argue it's a feature, not a business. I concede we'll have to see what happens when deposit accounts at real banks are given access to instant payment functionality.
[1] https://www.chase.com/digital/customer-service/helpful-tips/...
Is it? I just did a straw poll of people in my office, located in Canada. People from 28-50 no one has venmo. 3 of 15 knew about it.
Now my sample may not match the rest of the world as these are some pretty highly educated and high networth individuals so venmo isn't something that would really benefit us, but it does really weaken the ubiquitous claim
Where is Venmo ubiquitous?
Always remember that consumer banking in the US is at least a decade behind everywhere else in the first world. Apps that allow cheap/free and fast money transfers were and still are a big deal there.