Venmo was started by UPenn alums so it was popular among my friends long before it was a phenomenon (one of my good friends interned there and wrote the BlackBerry app).
I used to use it exclusively by SMS starting around 2011. It used to be smart enough where I could text in "Pay John $5 for food" and it would figure out which John I meant and do it. I loved that.
It's been amazing to watch Venmo grow to what it is now. If I could only keep three apps on my smartphone, I would choose Uber/Lyft, Venmo, and Google Maps. I can't navigate my life without all three of those.
In my last year of college my Venmo year in review showed that I had spent $17k on Venmo and received $18k. So not a huge net, just a constant movement of money in and out among my friends (rent, food, parties, etc). If I had to use cash we would have never been able to make the small things work, and if I had to use PayPal I would have accrued $100s to $1000s in fees.
So basically: thank you Venmo. You make my life measurably simpler.
Venmo is an objectively worse experience to Square Cash in every way. Bank accounts rather than debit cards, difficult Facebook-linked discovery, stupid social networking integration, obtuse UI.
Square Cash is beautiful, elegant, and effortless. I encourage my friends to use it over Venmo whenever I can. Unfortunately, Venmo is wildly more popular among people I know.
Example #1A: It's absolutely insane for Square to have an app targeted toward sending money to friends, splitting bills, etc. that doesn't have a built-in calculator. It's inexcusable that if I'm paying two even shares of a $213.42 bill split between seven people, I need to either do some mental math or leave the app to use another calculator.
This is one of the most common actions I take in Venmo. Until they get their act together on that, there's just no way I'm switching. It's a classic example of thinking that simplicity is the same thing as removing features.
I'd have to argue with "objectively" - many of your gripes are subjective.
The bank account vs. debit card is one time on setup - and has little to do with day to day interaction. Not do I see how the UI is obtuse - it takes 3 clicks to pay someone.
The one legitimate gripe you have (the facebook/social network), is a plus in my opinion - in the sense I can pay anyone by just knowing their name. Friend of so-and-so is throwing a party? I can look up their name and throw in, and there is an in-app log of the transaction.
I use Cash to send/receive money to my mom. I never have to worry about the the amount sent, what was it for and when it was sent and who it was sent to because its my mom. Its rarely the same for my friends.
"The bank account vs. debit card is one time on setup - and has little to do with day to day interaction. Not do I see how the UI is obtuse - it takes 3 clicks to pay someone."
I like Venmo, but I vehemently disagree here. Every time I recommend Venmo to someone who hasn't heard of it, I have to explain why they should give their banking information to a company they've never heard of. It's an onboarding disaster. I recommend Google Wallet to most people now since it's both a trusted name and doesn't require linking to a bank. My conversation is usually as simple as "Hey download Google Wallet - it's an easy way to zap money between people - and send me $x".
Also, if your Venmo account gets compromised, it's a fucking nightmare. I think this slate article summed up most reasonable persons' concerns pretty fairly:
I haven't figured out a reason to use Venmo. My Bank (Ally) has a really great app that has supported emailing/texting payments. They do require access to a web browser to complete the payment the first time, but subsequently it seems to auto-magically go through ACH if you opt into the bank saving your settings. None of my friends have complained about the process so it seems to be pretty painless.
On the other hand, my intern at work keeps getting Venmo spam. "So and so asked for $1: Hey, don't pay me $1. Instead of to 'http://foo.bar' and sign up for a job where you'll make $2000 per month from home!" and the like. That sort of stuff is a full stop turn off for me.
My guess is for people who don't bank traditionally, these services make sense even though they come with some weird (to me) tradeoffs. Apparently the spam, reliance on yet another third party, broadcasting of what they're doing with their money, etc is ok for their user base. We're just not their target customer.
I'm surprised you didn't note that Venmo forces you to carry a "Venmo" balance instead of paying out immediately to your bank account. That to me is the biggest area of superiority for Square Cash.
They were the darling startup of Philadelphia for a while. Proof that Philly could compete and grow successful technology companies. Our hackerspace used them to manage membership dues because PayPal was such a pain in the ass, and we really liked supporting a local business. One of our members was supposedly good friends with one of the founders, got us setup as a non-profit with them so we didn't have to pay transaction fees. A lot of us started using Venmo to share lunch costs both in the space and with our coworkers back at our jobs. I even convinced my landlord to start taking payment through Venmo; he loved it.
I remember hearing Venmo talk in one of the local tech press blogs about how much they loved Philly and were never going to move. Then literally a month later they had moved to NYC.
And then they conveniently "forgot" about our non-profit status, but didn't email anyone about it, and didn't report on the transaction fees in the same data stream as the rest of the app. I was treasurer at the time, and couldn't figure out why my spreadsheet balance tracking all of our accounts didn't match Venmo's balance. I had to do a special data export to find the transaction fees. And that data export was just to a CSV file, one that didn't quote fields with commas or escape newline characters correctly. I seem to remember the export wasn't even on the account page, you had to go find it under some obscure settings page.
I quit using them after that, and haven't looked back. When you're a non-profit, community-owned-and-operated hackerspace (as opposed to a for-profit fab-lab like TechShop), it's really hard to get people to pay their dues on time (or at all). Literally all we needed was money for rent and internet, the management was rotating volunteer basis, nobody got paid. Any amount of money that is expected and doesn't come through is a huge hit to the bottom line.
I've yet to see a payment app reach any major usage in my social network, which is extremely fragmented among Google Wallet, Snapcash, PayPal, Square Cash, Popmoney, Simple, bank-specific apps i.e. Chase Mobile... (Weirdly enough I don't know anyone using Venmo, though I'm familiar with it from HN and the like.) It seems like everyone wants a simple payment app, but there's a huge 'sign-up fatigue' from the fragmentation, and no single app has reached a useful saturation. I wish I were seeing the "viral spread" others see and don't really even care much about feature parity. :\
That's odd. Literally 95% of my friends are on Venmo, with the only holdouts being the people who refuse to grant account withdrawal permissions to a third party.
I don't like the "bucket" approach or Venmo's emphasis on linking to Facebook, so I don't have an account and use Square Cash or BofA transfers instead. I'm the exception though, I'd agree that the vast majority of my friends use it.
That was me up until a few months ago. A combination of a good track record and not wanting to be "that guy" caused me to switch. Don't make me regret it Venmo!
I just got introduced to VenMo a few weeks ago and was surprised by how many people outside of my circle seemed to be using it. The money I received is still sitting there just in case I need to reimburse somebody else soon.
I think if you have roommates you're much more likely to have heard of it. I personally would only need it for dinners/drinks/rides and when I go out socially I tend to fall back on the old approaches to keeping things square among the people in my circle.
I always dream of the day bitcoin will reach the point where it's widely used. It's literally the perfect solution for scenarios like this, but like everything else is heavily dependent on the network effect for success.
For those who are older, Venmo is used today probably more than cash by college students (for things like paying a friend back, paying membership dues, paying to get into a party, etc.)
It's pretty easy to use venmo without giving them your banking information. That's how I've been using it for years. You just have to be willing to carry a balance. What I did is went to a coworker who has venmo and gave him $50 in cash, and in return he transferred $50 to my venmo.
That wouldn't work so well if you were always receiving money or always sending it, but if you have a pretty even mix then it works great.
But it does require you to walk to the nearest ATM, withdraw the nearest round amount to the amount you need, then somehow try to get change from your friend (or just call it even) then walk around with the remainder.
I get what you're saying, but it isn't difficult to see why people find Venom a better option. What is exactly that bad about Venmo having your credit card number? You're protected from fraud anyway.
It's friction. If you have two entities providing the same service (money exchange), but one is easy to use and one is much harder to use, the easier one will win (all other things being equal.
Check method:
Needed items:
Payer - checkbook, pen
Payee - phone
Steps:
Payer Payee
Write check
Give check Receive check
Sign check
Use app to photograph and submit check
A similar occurrence in the financial field, mobile banking. Depositing checks via phone is easier than going to an ATM which was easier than making it to a physical branch of the right bank during business hours.
Cash is a better equivalence to Venmo, but only works when you're physically collocated. And then requires one or both parties to carry around cash (and it's not as easy to be precise, if you care about getting it right down to the penny).
You then have to write out a check to the right person, the amount, the other person has to sign it and then take two pictures. Venmo just reduces all of that to. Send $10 to X
Unfortunately, America hasn't reached the same level of financial sophistication as the UK regarding money transfers. It will eventually, obsoleting hacks like Venmo.
I don't know about all banks, but my bank has a flat fee on that service, which seems like it would make it significantly worse for paying back small sums (of which the flat fee is a greater percentage of).
Your kid's school doesn't take Venmo for field trips. Or school lunch programs. Or extracurricular activities. That's just to name a few "adult" things Venmo doesn't support, and requires a checkbook.
Great, you can pay friends back for rent, drinks, or eating out. #millenialproblems
I think services like Venmo are the way of the future, but there's something the minimalist in me really likes about the completely analog transfer of paper money. There's an app for everything and they all require mental overhead (the least of which is remembering which silly oft-nonsensical app name translates to the real-world thing you want it to do). I'm not a Luddite, but simplicity to me is not 100 different apps for 100 different everyday tasks they handle.
It's surprisingly hard to settle a dinner bill between 8 people who only have $20 bills, and no one actually goes inside the bank branch to get other denominations (or buys anything with cash to get change).
Its not very hard to ask for change from a restaurant or get change from a bar later on in the night.
If everyone got $20 from the ATM earlier what's to stop them from using their debt card to pay the bill? I was a server for many years and splitting the bill is standard for most younger people.
Let's take a specific example, then. Last week I ordered ~$140 worth of pizza for a party at our office. I paid with my credit card on the website of the pizza joint. Everyone owed about $12-13 in the end (yeah I know, it's an expensive local pizza chain).
Getting paid back with cash would've been a nightmare. Instead I opened Venmo, put in $150, entered the names of my colleagues who were partaking, and hit request. Venmo did the math and requested each person's portion with a push notification. They each confirmed, and I was paid back in full in a few minutes, without even needing to talk directly to most of the people involved.
There are so many situations like this. "But you could do it another more inconvenient way instead" or "you could continue to deal with recouping for hours afterward" aren't especially compelling arguments once you've had the convenience.
>Its not very hard to ask for change from a restaurant or get change from a bar later on in the night.
If everyone chips in a $20 or two, but there's a wide spread in min and max spend per person, getting the correct increments of change to distribute to each diner in the party becomes an efficiency nightmare. Nevermind the fact that it's just plain stupid when reasonable alternatives (Venmo, Square Cash, etc.) exist.
>splitting the bill is standard for most younger people
There are many food and drink establishments with a "no splitting of bills, ever" policy. This is more prevalent in some cities than others.
Paying off a bet about who would become CEO of twitter
Paying someone for my portion of a bar tab.
Fantasy Football league dues
Receiving money from someone for their portion of a bar tab
Paying someone for movie tickets
I use it for just about everything I would have previously had to write a check to an individual for. Most of the time this ends up being some form of paying someone back for my portion of a split bill or if they purchased something on my behalf.
Even though I have had paypal for years, most people cringe when someone doesn't yet have Venmo and offers to send via paypal.
I'm in my 30s. Today is the first day I've ever heard of Venmo.
I think the reason why I never heard of it is cause of the way my friends and I handle money. One person will grab drinks one day and the next time the next person picks up lunch. If someone buys a pizza everyone just gives them whatever bill from their pocket. None of us really "keep track" in specific dollar figures. Nobody says "this is only $5, you owe me $6."
Of course this kind of thing doesn't work out for every group.
I bought concert tickets and a friend paid me for one of them. I need help moving and my friend let me use her zipcar membership. I venmo'd her money for the cost of the van. A few friends and I wanted to send flowers to a friend who had a baby. One person bought them and charged us each the split amount. etc.
So is it useful in countries with good banking systems? In the UK transactions are pretty much instantaneous and only require account number/sort code.
I'm really surprised that Venmo started as an SMS service, not a mobile app. It blows me away that the product has been around for that long and evolved to the point that it's at now. Funnily enough this is also how Shazam started.
I think it really speaks to the execution aspect of a startup - be good at doing 1 thing, create a committed user base and then scale. According to the article Venmo's target audience was originally college kids who didn't have cash on hand to pay food trucks... Now they're doing $700mm in transactions.
Question: does anyone know how/if Venmo makes money or is it just a loss-leader for Braintree/PayPal?
I use it for thousands of dollars of transactions a year but I have never paid a penny in fees or seen an ad. People claim that Venmo acts as a bank and invests my carried balance but I can't imagine that's lucrative enough to pay all the bills.
They also charge a 3% fee on money sent using a credit card. Many of my friends just have a balance sitting in their Venmo account because they use it so often to pay for things from rent to groceries to splitting a bill at a restaurant. No idea of the metrics of how much can be made from the interest on those balances though.
They don't make the 3%, probably like a 1% spread after interchange fees. But they have a huge team, lots of software developers. So they most likely don't make a profit.
Something I find interesting about Venmo, Square cash etc... is how they target shortcomings in the US Banking system.
In the UK, pretty much anyone with a bank account can go to their bank's website and transfer money to any other bank account in the UK instantly, and for free.
Every bank has their own interface, some better than others, but it works well enough that I don't think Venmo could ever take off here.
Venmo is one of my favorite services. A very simple and effective UI. I have been using it extensively since 2011 with a group of friends, and it's amazing how easy it make to split restaurant bills or any other kind of expense. I just wish more people were using it.
It is spreading like a virus (in a good way) in corporate as well. We use it to pay each other for lunch. I now use it to pay my cleaning lady.... I'm glad to support something that isn't paypal. Hopefully Venmo stays small and lean.
> It was riding the twitter wave in letting you interact with handles (usernames) over SMS.
I'm curious, were any of these SMS service comparies successful as interactive SMS services?
It seems like most of the services like Twitter, Venmo, etc. "started" as SMS services but quickly moved to apps once the iPhone appeared. And only then did they blow up. But maybe I'm wrong about that. What does Twitter/Venmo non-notification SMS usage look like today?
Are there any big/popular interactive services today that are mainly accessed by SMS?
I used to use it exclusively by SMS starting around 2011. It used to be smart enough where I could text in "Pay John $5 for food" and it would figure out which John I meant and do it. I loved that.
It's been amazing to watch Venmo grow to what it is now. If I could only keep three apps on my smartphone, I would choose Uber/Lyft, Venmo, and Google Maps. I can't navigate my life without all three of those.
In my last year of college my Venmo year in review showed that I had spent $17k on Venmo and received $18k. So not a huge net, just a constant movement of money in and out among my friends (rent, food, parties, etc). If I had to use cash we would have never been able to make the small things work, and if I had to use PayPal I would have accrued $100s to $1000s in fees.
So basically: thank you Venmo. You make my life measurably simpler.