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Comment by rtp4me | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for this. Today, I had to open an account to send money to a friend. I was torn between Zelle and Venmo. Per my son's recommendation I went with Venmo. Not sure how many folks get screwed by Zelle, but your post made me feel a little better about going with Venmo. Although, I am sure Venmo has its fair share of shady characters...

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FYI Zelle is the banks' clone of Venmo. They both have identical policies here: they don't reverse transactions.

Edit: Yardie is correct, this is assuming your counterparty doesn't pay the business fee. So this'll protect you from legitimate businesses, but a scammer isn't going to pay the extra fee to enable reversibility.

I've never needed to but Venmo definitely reverses transactions. But you have to declare it as a business transaction. A lot of businesses don't want to do that because they have to pay a fee. I pay my barber through Venmo and always record it as a service, since I prepay. I pay my tutor as a family transaction. She gets paid after our sessions.

Speaking from experience, Venmo claims to reverse transactions, but will do everything in their power to NOT reverse your transaction, even if you mark it as business payment.

I paid an architect for work over Venmo. Work was never done and the architect ghosted me. So I sent all the info to Venmo in a dispute and they told me to pound sand.

Well that sucks. It seems outside of credit cards there are very few consumer protections.

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