[zacharypinter]

At this point, I just want one of these pay-with-your-phone solutions to win and be ubiquitous.

The current situation is almost comical. "Do you have Venmo? Haven't set that up yet, can you send over Paypal?. No, what about Square Wallet? Nope, what about Gmail?"

[macNchz]

At least for my demographic in NYC it feels like Venmo has enough traction that there isn't much friction if you ask to be paid/pay with Venmo. Enough people have it that the odd one out who doesn't feels compelled to sign up, and the onboarding is also fast enough that people can sign up while waiting for the check at a restaurant, for example.

[gonehome]

I used Venmo for a while and it works well. Square Cash I've found is even better since it skips the unnecessary social part, doesn't hold funds (directly transfers to bank) and somehow people can sign up without having to do the mini deposit account verify dance with their bank.

I'm not sure how this is possible since doesn't that mean that anyone can just input a debit card and start withdrawing money? It is nice though because people can sign up instantly instead of it taking a couple days.

[BrainInAJar]

It comes out of your bank account, that sounds awful. In that they don't have the security requirements of banks, or the fraud protection of credit cards. So Venmo gets hacked, and everyone's (non-refundable) money gets transferred to Russia. Great.

[ethanbond]

I've never understood how the hell Square does it. It's an awesome experience though.

[dustcoin]

They (ab?)use the transaction that occurs when money is refunded to a debit card.

http://jonbwhite.tumblr.com/post/66853226398/how-square-move...

[ethanbond]

Well I knew that they used the refund rails, but I was curious how they protect against fraud. This seems to imply that there's nothing magical regarding the anti-fraud: they just try stay on top of it.

[gonehome]

I was wondering how they did it - that's really cool. Thanks for the link.

[fragmede]

All that says is that Venmo has traction among your immediate peers. If Paypal/Square wallet/Bitcoin had the same traction, the rest of your comment would still be hold.

[ecma]

In fact this is just the second time I've heard about Venmo and I don't care remotely. My peer group is heavily PayPal based and therein lies the issue - fragmentation suddenly becomes painfully obvious when you try to pay someone you've not sent money to before or you go to a new store which has decided to use the new hotness which you've never even heard of.

[macNchz]

Sure, but that was really my point: I was just offering a tiny data point on the progress towards the goal that the person I was replying to expressed:

> At this point, I just want one of these pay-with-your-phone solutions to win and be ubiquitous.

I'm not saying this is a clear winner, just that Venmo is well on its way to ubiquity in this market, at least within my demographic/peer group. I'm fairly social, and I try to keep an eye on the tech that people I meet who don't work in tech are using, and Venmo certainly stands out in that regard.

[XorNot]

I live in Australia and have literally never heard of this service until right now. I think you are drastically overestimating its penetration.

[macNchz]

I didn't intend to make any claims about global market penetration. Just pointing out that it has notable tractiom in my market and peer group, and that because of that it had made strides towards the ideal bill-splitting situation outlined above: it is used widely enough that it's a clear default when splitting a bill with a mixed group. Maybe it won't catch on any more widely, but similar apps have been around for a while and never reached the adoption where multiple people in a group would suggest or accept them as payment. It's not actually available outside the US right now, which may be why you haven't heard of it, and which is clearly a big hurdle on the road towards true ubiquity.

[alanmoo]

I blame Lucas.

Seriously though, I don't like Venmo's "cash out" approach, but maybe that's because I don't use it enough to want to carry a Venmo balance.

[astazangasta]

It's bizzare that our financial sector is the largest area of the economy and yet has not managed to produce any innovation in this regard. Shouldn't banks be giving us easy ways to transfer money? Isn't this their function? Financial services?

[Mister_Snuggles]

Here in Canada, I can do an email money transfer to virtually any financial institution. All the recipient needs to do is bank with one that supports it and use online banking.

I don't know how innovative it is, but it works relatively well.

https://www.interac.ca/en/interac-etransfer/etransfer-detail

[josho]

Yes, Canada is ahead. On the other hand that email money transfer incurs a transaction fee from most banks.

What pisses me off is that we have a nearly ubiquitous way to send money in the physical world--a cheque. Yet, in the digital world we stumble to achieve the same.

I blame the profit driven corporations as each solution incurs a transaction fee and/or a proprietary solution with no interop with other systems.

My experience doing B2B money transfers: For those out of country I paid a $25-50 fee to do a wire transfer. Meanwhile bank transfers within Canada required a cash withdrawal (or bank draft), followed by a trip to the other bank to perform the deposit. Sigh.

[Mister_Snuggles]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the transaction fee either.

My bank allows me to set up personal payees, though I have to go into a branch to do it. It acts just like a bill payment, which I get for free. The downside is that it takes a day (if the recipient is at the same bank) or more (if they're not at the same bank).

The plus side on the email transfer is that it is virtually instant (~5 minutes usually).

[voltagex_]

I'll be staying in BC for a while this year. It's the first time I've seriously looked at Bitcoin to transfer money from Australia. The problem I have is the fees are from both sides - the Australian bank and the Canadian one.

Has anyone tried TransferWise?

[tajen]

I've used OzForex for $20k. Deeply satisfied.

[ojbyrne]

I (bank at B of A) just did this with my wife (Wells-Fargo). No transaction fees that I see.

[aianus]

Yet it's still slower and more expensive than sending a friend a photo of a physical filled-out cheque. Ridiculous.

edit: s/screenshot/photo/

[Mister_Snuggles]

I've found that email transfers take about 5 minutes, it's not terribly slow at all. The expense bothers me though.

[click170]

I would feel a lot better about using email transfers if my bank had better security than my bloody smartphone, but as it stands my pin can't be any more complex than the pin to my smartphone. Canadian banking security is embarrassing, though I understand its not much better elsewhere.

[kungfooguru]

Why? That isn't their function. They aren't making money off your checking account.

[frozenport]

Do you think these companies have contracts with all the banks, everywhere in the world?

The back-end is made from ACH/SWIFT which are indeed from traditional financial services. Access to these key services is restricted for liability reasons, although you can indeed make a wiretransfer from most bank accounts online. I can do 4 of these a month without any charges.

[masklinn]

In much of Europe, there's more or less no limit. In some countries like Belgium, direct bank transfer is so common[0] your IBAN is printed on your credit card. Others are significantly less enlightened in that regard.

[0] as in, it's a perfectly normal way to reimburse friends or colleagues who've paid stuff for you

[robryan]

Yep, we don't even think about this in Australia. All the banks have web/mobile apps with solid transfer tools. Same bank transfers are instant and to other banks are 1-2 business days.

[Mikeb85]

In Canada there are dirt simple ways to transfer money. Every bank has an app. Every card has a chip. And so on.

[tuna-piano]

Chase actually has a great solution, Chase QuickPay. Here in Chicago it is very popular. https://www.chase.com/online-banking/quickpay

[chime]

It's not limited to Chase. It's called clearXchange and was started by the 3 big banks (Chase, BoA, Wells Fargo) and is now extending to more: https://www.clearxchange.com/payments/member-banks

clearXchange allows account holders in any of the member banks to send funds to each other and it takes about 1-2 days after the first transaction. It also allows sending funds via cellphone. If you have a Wells Fargo account, you can send funds to a BoA account holder using just their phone number.

I think the banks have done a horrible job of advertising this free no-strings-attached service.

[Mister_Snuggles]

Canada has a similar solution, but it works across all of the big banks. Chase's solution is only for Chase customers, though it appears that the recipient doesn't necessarily need to be a Chase customer.

https://www.interac.ca/en/interac-etransfer/etransfer-detail

[jsprogrammer]

Innovation and long-term market share are probably inversely correlated.

[koyote]

In the UK we have PayM which is set up by the banks.

You simply load your bank's mobile app and send money to your mate using his phone number. It's pretty simple to set up and works across most major banks here.

[joshstrange]

You have no idea how jealous I am of that and your whole SWIFT code system.... ACH is the worst and most things (this included) have to use gross "refund" hacks to send money to a user's debit card because ACH is so slow, unrecoverable, and a large number of people just give you a blank stare if you ask for their Routing + Account numbers.

[nissehulth]

The Swedish equivalent is called Swish. The transfer is instant and all you need to know is the recipients phone number. Sender and recipient doesn't need to have the same bank.

Swish got some bad press when Moxie noticed that they "borrowed" some code, but the system is easy to use and seems to work well.

[1] http://blog.nullbyte.eu/open-curtains-in-swish-payments-serv...

[AtmaScout]

That would be awesome to have here in the US.

[squiguy7]

I wonder what incentives these new players have to provide a medium to transfer money on their platform? Why should I give my credit card to Facebook or Snapchat?

It doesn't really make sense for me. I would much rather use a vendor that's sole purpose is to provide a means of money transferring. I don't need the convenience of typing a sigil followed by the amount to send money to friends. If I really can't electronically send them money, I will go out of my way to give them cash at a later date.

[Mandatum]

Do one thing. Do it well. vs Do everything. Do it OK.

Companies have always started in the former, and expanded to the latter to not only diversify their "investments" (using that very loosely), but increase revenue.

It just makes sense. And from a tech company it makes sense in a world where internet banking is still only adopted by ~60% of consumers. (I know, surprised me too.)

[VLM]

The cognitive load is expensive. I had never heard of venmo until this thread although I've heard of the 20 or so competitors.

A confuseopoly depends on an uninformed public. I'm sure there's some special reason for each of the 20 or so payment services, although I don't have the time and motivation to research. Confuseopolies are designed to screw the end user. So I'm inherently scared away from "payment services". Especially when simple cash is to fast, easy, incredibly cheap, and convenient.

Where we're at right now with payment services is roughly 80s BBS or 90s walled garden legacy services. "Wow, if the whole world were on this BBS or on compuserv then the whole world could talk together... but no there's fifty BBSes in my LATA alone"

[blhack]

Simple dominates all of these, in my opinion. It is perfect from a user experience side. (If people already have the service, but people really want the service for more than the mobile payments part)

[joshstrange]

Simple lover here, I agree, I love being able to Simple Instant money to friends but I agree with the reply to your comment about how it's a bank and not a payment service. While I will stay will Simple for the foreseeable future (AMAZING customer support, beautiful app and website, goals, and instant transfer) I am somewhat disappointed in Simple as a company. They came out saying they were going to be a full bank and have an API and all of that and then backtracked on a lot of it. They are just a layer over an existing bank (which limits them somewhat) and there is still no API to be seen.

Also it feels like improvements have been VERY slow coming. Goals finally got some much needed attention but it's still lacking. I have to do everything manually when my paycheck comes in because their goals come out daily. I don't get paid daily, why would I want that money coming out daily? I just want to set aside money for car/rent/insurance/etc when I get paid, maybe things like "wants" (a new TV, computer, etc) work better for the daily pull but even then I'd rather just set aside $XXX when I get paid through goals.

[superuser2]

Simple is an entire bank/debit card. Square Cash, Venmo, etc can all be set up on your existing debit card. I certainly hope I don't have to switch banks to do mobile payments.

[blhack]

All of the other mobile payments things seem like they want to be your bank (but only sorta kinda sorta).

Simple is just that. A bank (or rather, a banking services provider. Us bancorp is the actual bank).

The tight integration with mobile payments, because of them also being a banking services provider, is absolutely flawless.

[gress]

I use Simple, and Square cash, and I have to say that Square Cash is far superior for sending money to friends.

[eldavido]

Simple has several significant limitations, namely, the need to mail checks over a certain threshold (I think $5k) and I don't know whether they do credit origination, either.

End of the day, I went with good-old-brick'n'mortar Wells Fargo because (1) I wanted to establish a long-term customer relationship with a bank that can provide me with various credit products (including for business) (2) their ATM network is ubiquitous where I live (SF) and (3) there are many branches with convenient hours for when I want to do something a little off the beaten path.

I don't give a rat's about how quickly a $10 payment is available. I care a lot more about good fraud controls, and the ability to speak to a human being, in person, when things occasionally go wrong.

[untog]

But it involves people signing up for a new bank. The barrier to entry for Simple is huge.

[TheSoftwareGuy]

At least Gmail & Facebook are pretty widely used already though

[wongarsu]

But with both Google and Facebook essentially being advertising companies a notable amount of people are hesitant to give them access to personal data. That could be a real hindrance to them becoming ubiquitous payment providers.

[darkstar999]

> a notable amount of people are hesitant to give them access to personal data.

I bet this number is much lower than you think it is. People outside of the tech/hacker scene don't care about privacy (in this context). "Who cares if Facebook knows that I went to McDonalds?"

[fizzbatter]

I tend to agree with that, regardless. My general take is that i want life empowering features driven by data. Of course, i would prefer to not give X company my data, but until a home-brew solution comes to light it's unrealistic for me to expect privacy and these types of features. In the end, i want the features. I want Google Now (well, i want what it represents.. it still sort of sucks haha).

[soylentcola]

Honestly, if said data is used to generate some demographic profile in order to show me less irrelevant ads while still paying for these incredibly useful services, I don't terribly mind. Advertising has been around for a while but being able to guess what might apply means less reliance on sheer volume in order to get the same value from the "ad space". I completely understand the ways this can backfire (shadowy three-letter agencies stealing that profile info, leaks that reveal info that someone figures out how to tie to your identity, etc) but those things are already distinct possibilities with credit card companies, email providers, loyalty cards, medical records, and a host of other things. Leveraging information to create valuable services that would otherwise not be possible is probably not going away anytime soon. At least this way it's easy to split bar tabs or cab rides.

[FreakyT]

Not their respective payment services, though. Receiving one of these Facebook payments won't work unless you've added a credit card to your Facebook.

[gk1]

"You owe me $20" "OK, hold on, here's an ATM." ... "Here you go."

[anuragbiyani]

"The total for both of us was $55, so you owe me $27.5."

"OK, here is some random bank's ATM which charged me $44 to get $40 (2 x $20) out, and now you say you don't have $12.5 in change on you ... well, shit." ... "What will you prefer: GWallet or FB ?"

[VLM]

"OK you say you owe me a beer from last week so here's a $20 and we're even"

"Oh you need the full $27.50 because your life will collapse due to a lack of $7.50 in cash although nobody uses cash, well, there's an ATM in the lobby thats free on my network, I'll spot you $30 on the $27.50 and you owe me a can of soda next time"

The problem with a bazzilion services all trying to extort small transactional fees either short term or long term is the marketing about their fee can't avoid mentioning that the fee is really small and we're discussing fairly small amounts of money.

[what_ever]

There is absolutely no fee on Venmo/Square Cash/PayPal as long as you use debit card/bank account.

I am okay with rounding off amounts with my close friends. But with other people there is that social angle with being comfortable enough when I tell them I will buy you soda next time. Plus consider this "buying soda next time" with 10 people at the same time in either direction. The question is not about $2.50 being a small amount. I like being exact about money and so do lot of my friends. May be I am from a different background where $2.50 is still money that should be cleared.

[yen223]

Which horrendous country are you living in where ATMs charge $44 for a withdrawal?

[mschuster91]

He got 40€ out and paid 4€ in fees. Thats not uncommon in Germany, where different bank groups (eg Deutsche Bank, the Raiffeisen cooperative association and the Sparkasse) charge nothing for withdrawals but other bank customers get charged. Couple of years ago it was introduced that the fees had to be displayed prior to withdrawal but they're still high.

[anuragbiyani]

"$44 to get $40" => $4 in fees for using another bank's ATM. This is very much within the ballpark range for USA at least.

Sidenote: Usually such fees are O(1), i.e., independent of the actual amount being withdrawn (and even applies to non-monetary transactions, such as balance inquiry).

[macleanjr]

$4 in fees

[mrjatx]

"You owe me $20" "Ok, hold on, let me get into my car, drive down the street, look for parking, get out of my car, wait in line, pay an extra $1-4, drive back down the street, look for parking, exit car, then hand you your $20 that just cost me about $30 in time, effort and gas."

But maybe I'm cynical because I'm in Austin and driving anywhere is just miserable.

[afarrell]

Why are there no blue mailboxes anywhere?

[smackfu]

When you get used to something like Venmo, and a critical mass of friends are using it, it's amazing how effortless it is. Take a cab somewhere, one person pays with their credit card, the other people settle up in the next 30 seconds. Done.

[fragmede]

It's the critical mass of friend's that key though. Hell, Paypal is just as effortless once that critical mass is hit, and that's has been around since 1998.

[yincrash]

Paypal's UX has changed to be simpler, but I don't think they even had a mobile app for the longest time. It was also several inputs, such as choosing the type of transaction to make sure you don't get charged a fee for sending money to your friend.

I'm not going to go home and remember to paypal on my desktop when I could just use the venmo app to send you money right after you paid.

[smackfu]

Plus PayPal has the friction of forcing you to log in. Which many of these other sites skip.

[dragonwriter]

Square Cash has pretty much no friction, even without other people actively using it, because recipients don't need to create an account.

[bluetidepro]

"Oh wait, that's not my bank's ATM. I don't want to be charged a $4 fee. Oh well, I'll get you next time." ATM's are not a good solution. I don't want to pay $24 to give someone $20 because of ATM fees. Or wait in a long line (assuming you are at a busy location/area) to get the money.

[r00fus]

Or - here's this "checkbook" thing I have sitting in my bag, I'll write you a $20 check, and you open up your banking app and deposit it immediately, and keep the paper check just for a receipt.

[spydum]

People walk around with checks? I cringe on the rare occasions I have to write one to the local water utility (they refuse to provide any recurring payment solution - I suspect because low margins, and they like the late payment fees).

[andrepd]

Wait, there's a fee to withdraw money from ATMs? Never heard of such a thing.

[fragmede]

It is pretty much the default in the United States, but Wikipedia seems to say it exists around the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATM_usage_fees

[sp332]

It depends on a lot of things. Some banks charge to withdraw from other banks' accounts. Some banks join "networks" and don't charge for others in the same network. Some ATMs are set up inside stores, and they charge money that goes to the store instead of a bank.

[wongarsu]

I hear it's pretty common in the US. I guess it has to do with the question who operates the ATM. In Germany it exists too if you use an ATM from a bank that's not partnering with your bank (which is ~50% of all ATMs and straightforward to figure out).

[matwood]

Why is anyone still paying ATM fees??? Change to a bank that refunds the fee.

[hackmiester]

Ah, yes, instead of using Square Cash, I'll just have all my friends change banks! ;)

[walterbell]

There are banks that refund ATM fees.

[andrewstuart2]

It's inevitable:

http://xkcd.com/927/

[andrepd]

Don't forget about Bitcoin.

[puranjay]

Almost no one outside of my techie friends know about Bitcoin. Even fewer understand how it works, so that's a no go.

[stream_fusion]

Not knowing the technical, or legal arrangements of SWIFT doesn't prevent one from making a traditional international wire-transfer.

[grubles]

My 70 year old dad can use bitcoin. I'm sure your friends can learn.

[Mahn]

Your 70 year old dad is an exception in a sea of people that don't want to learn.

[grubles]

One comedian put it this way: You can't fix stupid.

Point being: Learning is a lifelong pursuit, and if you don't want to learn then you will be left behind using Facebook Messenger to send money. Kidding, but you hopefully get the gist.

[what_ever]

But at what expense? The existing system is not that broken for majority of the world so why should they care about learning this?

[aboutus]

That will change. Cryptocurrencies are here to stay. There is no undoing decentralized commerce. It will change the world in ways we can hardly fathom.

[smackfu]

If your debts are in dollars, I don't see any point in Bitcoin with its fluctuating exchange rate.

[grubles]

The points are that you don't need 1. a bank account 2. a debit/credit card 3. facebook messenger in order to send money instantly.

[smackfu]

You just need a bitcoin balance and the recipient needs a bitcoin address. Which practically seems like way more friction than the three items you listed.

[waterlesscloud]

Bitcoin has its problems, but getting a bitcoin address is much less friction than setting up a bank account.

[aianus]

That's like encountering email in 1994 and dismissing it as a piece of crap because none of your friends have computers or internet access.

[thedufer]

A better analogy is that it's like dismissing the alternatives to email that popped up in the later 90s and dismissing them because even though they were obviously better than email (but not as much so as email over snail mail), no one you knew used them.

[vectorpush]

Not to mention the fact that the recipient needs a bank account anyway if they want to convert their bitcoin into something that they can actually spend outside of the dark web. Worse, the recipient also needs a bitcoin exchange account to even make the conversion possible, then they have to wait two days for the exchange to ACH the money into their bank. This all assumes the exchange will even do business with them following their extensive KYC checks.

I've never had a bank require that I OAuth with Facebook or give them copies of my passport in order to get an account. Bitcoin is just not the solution to this problem.

[vanzard]

> needs a bank account anyway if they want to convert their bitcoin into something that they can actually spend outside of the dark web

That's not true. Americans (Facebook's intended audience for this Messenger money-sending feature) can spend bitcoins directly at Microsoft, Dell, Expedia, Overstock, Newegg, Tiger Direct, DISH Network, etc. They can use and spend bitcoins theoretically received from FB friends without having a credit card, without even having a bank account.

100,000 (legitimate!) merchants worldwide accept Bitcoin - http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bitcoin-now-accepted-by-100000-merc... It is time to kill the myth of "only the dark web accepts Bitcoin".

[grubles]

>Not to mention the fact that the recipient needs a bank account anyway if they want to convert their bitcoin into something that they can actually spend outside of the dark web.

I guess you've never read https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade

[grubles]

So that is 2 requirements for bitcoin versus 5 requirements for sending via facebook: bank acct, debit/credit card, email acct, facebook acct, facebook messenger (let's not forget the immense amount of personal information you willingly give away).

Yet, bitcoin seems like way more friction?

[taytus]

Never heard of Venmo.

[Yhippa]

Haven't the Japanese had NFC payments forever?

[nfoz]

I want the govt / central banks to do it.

[icebraining]

Move to Ecuador :) http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-28992589