Venmo and Zelle May Not Be Free for Much Longer | Hacker News Reader

Venmo and Zelle May Not Be Free for Much Longer

bloomberg.com

15 pointscwwc19 comments

> In December, a Chicago resident was robbed at gunpoint by assailants who demanded her phone and the password to her JPMorgan app

This scenario is insanely scary to me. I had a friend that was robbed under similar circumstances (someone saw him enter his passcode into his phone then stole it from him). He ended up loosing around $50k.

What makes that scenario much worse is linked in the original robbery article, where Chase started the investigation and then closed it as the transaction was deemed "authorized" thereby keeping them down ~$2k. Despite escalating with police reports and video footage of the assault, Chase still closed the case. It was only after they went to the local news org that Chase finally did something.

It was authorized, the authorization was given out. There was always option to refuse. The right party to compensate is not the bank, but the perpetrators.

It's frustrating that you can't preset transfer limits on these apps. Like I'd be fine with a $500 transfer limit to accounts I haven't previously sent to, with a 24-hour period to authorize a new recipient to receive more.

Or put an automatic 24 hour hold on any new recipients. You can enter the transaction, the recipient gets the notification but with the qualification that it's pending.

That would pretty much put a stop to the robbery problem without being an issue for the legitimate user as it's only intended for friendly situations anyway.

Now the robbery turns into a murder?

They probably would just need to kidnap you for 24 hours, but murder would also work. Depends how patient they are and if they have the manpower to guard you for 24 hours.

Anyone who goes around murdering every robbery victim is going to have an awful lot of police hunting them. It's not a viable path.

Zelle at major banks already does that. I can't transfer more than $2k-$5k into my own account of many years at a different bank, and I'm pretty sure the limit was more like $500 initially. Honestly, I have no idea how to steal $50k from anyone's banking app. Maybe a wire? Haven't tried via app. Not to mentioned whoever you're wiring to has been KYC'd. But certainly not through Zelle at US top 5 banks.

I have no financial apps of any sort on my phone. I wonder if robbers would believe that. Maybe I need to create a fake one, just in case...

Unless you uninstalled a browser from your phone, too, there is always the banks website.

Good point. Making a fake website is even easier, though. This is all theoretical, really. I'm not actually nervous about any of this (and when I stop carrying a smartphone, the issue becomes moot anyway).

> Popular payment services are as convenient for fraudsters as they are for you.

Internal presentations on Zelle at the banks called that out specifically as a feature of Zelle, moving the nexus of liability for fraud toward the customer and further from the bank.

> customers of the three largest lenders lost a total of $370 million via Zelle

this must be absolutely terrible for the banks, because this isn't even lost revenue, it's lost total payments volume of other people, which could in theory absolutely destroy and eclipse any actual revenue. I bet $370m is already a good chunk of revenue they make off these transfers.

Me and my family/friends still mainly use PayPal. It's been free to send money back and forth for as long as I can remember and still free and still works great.

Not really sure why we needed so many other new apps.

What does Venmo do that PayPal doesn't?

Competitor of PayPal until 2013 when they bought them out. Now, it's basically the same thing but they offer a social media feature where you can publicly share the memo for the transaction. Everything else is the same though since it's just PayPal under the hood.

Venmo is not really free though.

It is for all practical purposes for P2P transfers and free to the consumer for commercial transactions.

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