Apple Pay surpasses Venmo and PayPal as teens’ favorite payment app | Hacker News Reader

Apple Pay surpasses Venmo and PayPal as teens’ favorite payment app

9to5mac.com

37 pointscarlycue22 comments

I feel like this isn't an Apples to Apples comparison. (heh) Venmo is usually used to send money between friends, not for services or purchases online/in-person. A better comparison I think would be to Apple Cash vs. Venmo (where I think you would find Venmo has a large lead).

Sidenote: Many people don't know this, but Venmo is owned by Paypal and comparing Venmo to paypal feels like comparing TV viewership between ABC and ESPN.

I’d guess the average person can’t distinguish Apple Pay and Apple Cash.

I'm not sure we can blame the average person here. From https://www.apple.com/apple-cash/ :

> Apple Cash is the simple and secure way to spend money with your iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad. Easily make purchases with Apple Pay and send and receive money right in Messages.

Am I purchasing with Cash or Pay here?

They also seem to have you use Apple Pay to use Apple Cash:

> How do I send money with Apple Cash?

> In Messages, tap the Apple Pay button, enter an amount on the keypad, and tap Pay.

I haven't used the feature so maybe it's less confusing than it's described in their marketing literature. (They do go on to explain the difference a bit further in the page, to their credit).

It is confusing because Apple is using Apple Pay to refer to multiple things.

Or is it because they put Apple™ in front of otherwise perfectly understandable words...?

When someone says they will ‘pay’ me, that doesn’t make me think that I’ll get money in a few days time.

Maybe if Apple called it ‘Apple cheque is in the mail’ I might understand their definition.

Apple Pay is the payment conduit and Apple Cash is a store of value you can use with it.

As an American outside the US, getting money to/from family used to be … complicated. Venmo literally kicked me off the platform within a few months of living here and you used to not be able to update the app if you used a different country’s App Store.

Long story short, Apple has allowed my mom to easily send me money on my birthday. Sure, with the slow af American banking system, I can’t spend it for days, but at least she isn’t mailing me a check anymore.

Well you can spend instantly.... but you have to use Apple Pay Cash to do so. Transferring to your bank, as you mentioned takes a few days.

Not really surprising. I've recently re-entered the dating pool and have learned that people really do ignore people "with green texts" (which means non-imessage). Apple has very successfully become the "if you don't have one you're poor and/or a loser" brand.

It works both ways. I wouldn't want to date someone who did that so it saves everyone time.

Agreed. It sucks to experience, but ultimately if you're that shallow then I'm not interested either. I just thought the whole thing was a meme, but it's pretty real.

I mean, idt that’s really fair. Apple purposefully makes the experience of communicating/texting with another Apple user more physically enjoyable than with a non-Apple user. I don’t think it’s a personal/shallow issue, when you’re behind a screen your brain isn’t making the same personal decisions as in person. I mean if the phone is making the experience poor compared to talking with other Apple users, it becomes unappealing to pursue more of that communication. Why power through that for a person you just met/are just dating?

It's not Apple making the experience bad. It's the Americans trying to use a tech from the 90s to text each other. Of course it's not enjoyable - it's SMS. In other parts of the world people install and use modern cross-platform apps to text each other. Yes, Apple made sure to seamlessly transition iPhone to iPhone chats to use modern tech while pretending it's still SMS. But the fact is that the users in USA are intentionally opening an SMS app to text people. Everywhere else, the native Messages app is completely ignored.

Are you joking or is this serious? I wouldn't want to date someone who could be deterred from interacting with another person solely due to the color of a text bubble. The fact that their mind allows for that possibility is a huge signal that they most likely don't have anything interesting for me to discover about them or discuss with them. Colors are shallow. Actions are not.

If anything I'm being more fair than they would be.

I understand where you’re coming from, but isn’t it possible it’s not really a conscious decision being made? I mean do you think that people are actively choosing colors over people? I just think it may be more likely users of Apple devices are generally manipulated to associate interacting with Apple devices as a more enjoyable experience than with non-Apple devices. You say you are being more fair than “they” would be, but purposeful lack of understanding doesn’t seem very fair to me, it seems like you’re maybe trying to retaliate against an invented perception. I don’t think it’d hurt anyone to consider opposing actions in a realistic light.

Unless you're taking drugs when using iMessage, it's not appreciably better than just using Meta Messenger. In fact, it's missing features compared to both Meta Messenger and Whatsapp that make it an objectively less useful app.

No way you're in tech.

Hahaha and why’s that?

You're better off. The kind of shallow person who chooses romantic partners based on the color of their text bubble in a messaging app is the kind of person who does not have successful/stable relationships.

In the US.

seriously, with all the qualifiers it hardly seems newsworthy.

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