[Reason077]

People use PayPal, Venmo, Revolut, etc mostly for convenience. You just need a phone number or email to send a payment, compared to a bank/wire transfer where you first need to obtain the account number you’re sending to.

All of these services (including PayPal) charge no fees for personal payments. Just to merchants for commercial transactions, which often come with buyer protection, free credit/payment plans for the buyer, etc.

[dr_dshiv]

My bank app, ING, lets me send a payment request link as a text, via whatsapp, etc. Which is a nice way of not needing account numbers to send money.

[mariushn]

But does it offer an API to do this? No. So it's useless for merchants who'd like to offer it as an alternative payment method.

I believe this would work, but I'm not an influencer: https://medium.com/@mariusandreiana/open-letter-to-banks-ple...

[stephen_g]

Yeah, the banking regulator and the banking industry alliance added that as a feature with the New Payments Platform in Australia. You register a ‘PayID’ with your bank (can be a phone number, email address, company number etc.) and then you just share that with people to do free real-time transfers (between basically any Australian banks).

[jokethrowaway]

PayPal is used because of customer protection.

Revolut is used because they hide their low forex exchange fees (despite their claims of nearly no fees, you'll find cheaper transfers elsewhere).

Venmo may be convenient in the States. I've never seen anyone in Europe using it. Banks have some system to send money to a phone number, though, which serves the same purpose.