Apple Is In Talks To Launch Its Own Venmo (recode.net) 48
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Recode: The company has recently held discussions with payments industry partners about introducing its own Venmo competitor, according to multiple sources familiar with the talks. The service would allow iPhone owners to send money digitally to other iPhone owners, these people said. One source familiar with the plans told Recode they expect the company to announce the new service later this year. Another cautioned that an announcement and launch date may not yet be set. The new Apple product would compete with offerings from big U.S. banks as well as PayPal, its millennial-popular subsidiary Venmo, as well as Square Cash in the increasingly competitive world of digital money-transfers. Apple has also recently held discussions with Visa about creating its own pre-paid cards that would run on the Visa debit network and which would be tied to the new peer-to-peer service, sources told Recode. People would be able to use the Apple cards to spend money sent to them through the new service, without having to wait for it to clear to their bank account.
Re:Another clone to fail (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd never heard of it before.
*sigh*
I guess I'd better hike my pants up and start shoo'ing kids away from my lawn...
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I looked it up the other day.
As best as I can tell, it's succeeding because
1) it's more single focused than its competitors - it's about peer payments more than grocery store/etc payments.
2) it's got financial backing of Paypal (owner)
3) it's social (not sure why this is an appeal, but articles seem to claim it is)
4) it's built a network affect with millenials already (not sure how. awesome marketing at "welcome to college get your credit cards here" day?)
Google Wallet/etc. are android, and Apple pay is and
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It's the simplest and easiest way to send money to someone with no surcharge which is why it is popular. Plus, you can turn off the social part of it which surprisingly most people don't do.
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Most people aren't as paranoid about their money. Even less have bitcoins.
What's a 'Venmo'? (Score:1)
What's a 'Venmo'?
No, I won't google for it. I won't read the article, either. The summary should explain what a 'Venmo' is.
"Venmo" defined for the lazy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Venmo" defined for the lazy (Score:4, Informative)
And no, they did not pay us to post this story, nor did they sponsor this comment.
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From the report: "Venmo registered $17.6 billion in volume and is still doubling year over year..." Sure, they're not omnipresent, but they're certainly one of the most influential peer-to-peer (P2P) payment platforms, especially among millennials.
And no, they did not pay us to post this story, nor did they sponsor this comment.
How are they one of the most influential person-to-person (that's what P2P stands for in this segment, not peer-to-peer) payment platform? XX billion per year? That's basically nothing compared to any major bank's P2P system, which nearly everyone already has access to, for free, including sending to other banks. All you need is the recipient's email address.
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With Venmo, I can ask someone their user name and pay them back for half a meal or six pack within 30 seconds. No bank platform allows for that convenience.
All of my friends and I use Venmo frequently. In addition to scenarios mentioned above, I also use it to pay my portion of utilities and rent to my roommate as well. I'm a late-twenty-something for reference.
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Venmo offers flexibility not offered by traditional banks (at least US ones, anyway).
With Venmo, I can ask someone their user name and pay them back for half a meal or six pack within 30 seconds. No bank platform allows for that convenience.
All of my friends and I use Venmo frequently. In addition to scenarios mentioned above, I also use it to pay my portion of utilities and rent to my roommate as well. I'm a late-twenty-something for reference.
WTF do you mean no bank platform offers that convenience?
I can literally send money to an email address in a few clicks and be done with it. The only thing the recipient needs to do is a one-time confirmation with their bank that they own that email address. Every major bank in the US is supported. Everything after that one-time confirmation is automatic. Venmo is much more of a hassle.
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Venmo is like PayPal but not crooked.
Re:"Venmo" defined for the lazy (Score:4, Informative)
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Except who has bitcoins?
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I'm not defending this Venmo thing, but...you've never split the cost of a meal with anyone? Really? That's not normal at any age.
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I have never "split" a check outside of separate receipts, and I have never even witnessed it being done, except on humorous sketches about heavily imbalanced checks being split like the above scenario.
buying tickets and stuff too. Nobody I work/live/hang out with would ever pr
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Not as easy as in any other civilised country, where they simply bring the card reader to each individual and charge your card for what you purchased.
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Nope, it will be built into iTunes, which currently doesn't have enough functionality shoehorned into it.
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Millennials don't have any money, unless it's from their student loads for their useless liberal arts degree.
Lol you're a caricature of a curmudgeonly grandfather from 1968.
Cue dramatic music (Score:2)
without having to wait for it to clear to their bank account
Don't worry, the debt collectors and call centers assigned to harass you already have your iphone number.
This is only the beginning
America's Banking System Sucks (Score:2)
We don't need more of this proprietary payment garbage. We need person-to-person transfers between banks that are fee free and run through the ACH system. EVERY OTHER COUNTRY with a modern banking system has this! America is still in the 1990s:
http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-american-banking-system-is-still-in-the-1990s/
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Genuine point of education for me if people don't mind please - can you not just use your own banking app, or a national standard similar to PAYM [paym.co.uk]? Is it that people are charged for doing that in the US?
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I'm not aware of any such national standard. I know some individual banks have their own money sharing services, but they aren't at all standardized—they've basically just contracted with any of these other 3rd party services. My credit union only recently added the ability to add an external account to do ACH transfers to/from, but it has to be an account you own, or at least verified by small deposits into the account. (A ridiculously bad security measure in the first place.)
The U.S. banking syste
What the hell is Venmo? (Score:2)
It sounds more like a Google Wallet / Paypal competitor. What's the point of comparing it to some random product no one's ever heard of?
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Just because you haven't heard of it doesn't mean nobody's heard of it. It's a subsidiary of PayPal, so it's not small potatoes.