How does that happen. I don't know a single person who uses Venmo. Not one. I know a lot of people and I work in Tech.
Is Venmo similar?
I love Splitwise; almost all of my friends at uni use it and pretty much all shared expenses go on it. I also use Walnut (http://www.getwalnut.com/), not for the settlement feature, but rather for the expense tracking which automatically reads SMSes and builds up monthly expense reports.
Far better to use a vanilla expense manager. Maybe it takes an extra second to enter the details of the transaction but at least your data never leaves your device. That's the way it should be.
If it's Splitwise, then it seems like PayPal doesn't care so much for propping up Venmo. Interesting either way.
Walnut seems like an interesting product. Thanks for the link.
I, have found developers and other tech workers to be, somewhat ironically, more "Ludditic" than the general population.
I wonder if mechanical engineers tend to be safer drivers...
He has had the same car for the past 25 years now.
throwout bearing
I'd rather replace my CV joints every 10 years than be that jerk who slows down to a crawl on every turn on a mountain road.
It's the throwout bearing. Your father has a point, but I would rather keep the clutch in. Too much thinking involved putting it in neutral every time you stop.
The brakes will hold a slipped clutch and a rear end.
The clutch has an added benefit of you get rear ended and drop it - engine braking is a thing. Not good for the engine, potentially good for your forward bumper when you get reared.
There's no engine breaking when stopped, if the engine is running.
I typically do keep my foot on the brake when stopped in traffic. And I do balance brakes, clutch and throttle when stopped on a hill. But except for stop-and-go traffic, or when getting ready to punch it, using the clutch and brakes together seems pointless.
The way you phrased it makes me think of cops at lights just going around and aggressively throwing gear sticks into 1st.
> Not putting it in neutral when stopped can contribute to failing your driving test in the U.K.
So the context was specifically driving tests.
Aside from reducing the wear on the throwout bearing, what purpose is served by putting the car in neutral every time it is stopped in traffic?
In all seriousness, that's why I did it. My first stick was a truck, and even though it was small, it has a stiff clutch. You got tired of standing on it.
If that's what you like, go for it, but two posts seemed to imply that I'm doing something wrong by keeping the vehicle in gear with the clutch in while stopped in traffic, and I'd really like to know what that is. One post implied that UK law encourages or even requires that the vehicle be taken out of gear when it's stopped in traffic. I've never heard anything like that in the US.
I've never encountered a clutch that took any noticeable effort for me to operate. And, considering all of the other bearings in a vehicle that are rotating under load constantly, I question the value of trying to save the throwout bearing a few extra seconds on each stop.
So I would really like to know why I should shift to neutral when stopped in traffic. Should I do it when I'm waiting for a break in the traffic in the oncoming lane so I can turn across it? (A left turn in the US.) When I'm stopping at a stop sign, and then immediately going because there is no other traffic around? When I'm stopped for a few seconds in a stop-and-go traffic jam?
The reasoning given by my driving instructor was that this secures the vehicle and makes things just a little more safe for everyone.
If I am stopped in traffic with my parking brake on and sometime lightly rear-ends me, my vehicle may not move at all. If my parking brake were not applied, the probability of my vehicle not moving at all drops significantly.
If I am rear-ended without the parking brake applied such that my vehicle rear-ends someone in-front of me, I am partially responsible for the damage caused ahead due to my failure to secure my vehicle.
This is only tangentially related to taking my foot of the clutch. I depress the clutch in order to apply the parking brake correctly. Once the parking brake is applied, I simply have no need to continue to depress the clutch.
It takes me very little time to apply the parking brake and then release it and so I tend to do so when stopping for more than a second or two.
Now, I'm pretty sure this is because I don't live in the US. Is this a purely US-specific service, or is it available (and used) anywhere else.
If not, are there similar services in other countries? I believe Wepay in China is something similar, but I don't know much about that one either.
When I joined everyone was there and I was promptly added to tens of groups which I promptly left one by one.
I have been an Android developer for 6 years now.
Made in 1987 here. I have Paypal as well but I prefer Google Wallet. Google Wallet is directly connected to my bank account. I don't trust Paypal to connect it to my bank account. Why would you trust Venmo with your bank account I would never know. Am I... am I too old and too conservative?
I prefer square cash, but this entire app ecosystem only exists because American banks don't allow free wires for some reason.
The only people I know who use google wallet are google employees.
As far as trust there's pretty limited risk, lots of protection/laws around bank access and easy to audit.
Ah - I kept wondering what the main hook for these services was, appreciate efficiency and social effects are the USP, but wondered what the main reason was over and above just a direct transfer from your mobile banking app (how most people I know here in the UK do this).
* If I know their bank routing number and account number, I can just send them money directly without any involvement on their end.
* Most people will not just give out their account info, even though it's on every check they write.
None of this would be a problem except that each bank uses a different system. Chase uses ChasePay. Ally and PNC use PopMoney. There are several others. This causes a lot of friction when sending money. "Oh, you use chase pay? Now I have to set up an account there, too."
Venmo (and others) let you abstract away the bank details. Everyone in your friend group signs up for 1 account (and it could be a competing service. I like Sqaure Cash) and is ready to send. They also offer better account lookup and the ability to send a payment request.
They also often require using a clunky web UI without an ability to do it from a mobile app.
I can understand not wanting to support the company as a matter of principle, but I'm not sure I buy the risk angle.
But for the past several years I've just defaulted to Wallet ever since they added the ability to attach money to an email like you're attaching a file. I know it's just UI but that was sort of brilliant (if done in the typical fuss-less Google fashion so most don't even notice it).
So while I still lean toward buying rounds or taking turns paying for things with friends I see often, occasionally I'll be out someplace and unexpectedly need cash without a nearby ATM. If a friend has cash, I can just send them funds to pay back. Same goes the other way around.
Other times it's something like ordering tickets to an event and I just buy for myself and a few friends at the same time. Then if they end up going, they can forward me funds at their leisure and no messing with ATMs or writing checks.
Sounds like Venmo is used in a similar way but I've not started using it if only because I already have something I'm satisfied with and the handful of people who even want to use such a thing have it as well. I tend not to proselytize to other people who don't express an interest in doing things this way, but I've yet to run into anyone who is using Venmo.
Although maybe half a year ago I was single for the first time in years and saw a lot of people mostly-jokingly (I hope) on Tinder asking people to Venmo them $5 to get their attention. Seemed like either a cynical/ironic "why not?" sort of joke or the least ambitious prostitutes in history.
If you don't trust Paypal, I can understand why you don't trust Venmo.
Venmo is a service of PayPal, Inc., a licensed provider of money transfer services (NMLS ID: 910457). All money transmission is provided by PayPal, Inc. pursuant to PayPal, Inc.’s licenses. © 2017 PayPal, Inc.
I’m 37 and probably wouldn’t know anyone using it in my normal social circle except I happen to know a bunch of ~24 yr olds (some younger) via a younger colleague.
Of those you are younger guess how many use Venmo? Every. Single. One.
Not every day, or all the time, but regularly: especially with friends & at weekends. It’s spread so we’ll split lunches at work occasionally with it.
Hell, there are several restaurants in Berkeley that allow you to pay with it because college kids use it so much.
This may vary by your group and where they at in life, but by my late 20s, those things mattered a lot less. If I buy someone a beer, I just hope they will get me back at some point and if not, then I bought them a beer- no big deal-enjoy! (well enjoy, unless this is the fifth time in a row I have done this and you haven't gotten me back).
I am in my mid-late 30s, and I have Venmo. I just tend to not use it very often, only for fairly big ticket items- concert/event tickets, someone buys a gift for someone else that we all chip in on, a restaurant gives a hard time about taking multiple credit cards, etc.
I much prefer it for payments amongst friends than anything else now though. It’s rather good.
I would love to know if the college crowd was a specific target for venmo: it’s nailed it
Even my dad who has virtually no real friends outside the husbands of my mom's friends, had multiple contacts using Venmo when I got him to use the app so we would have an easier time paying for stuff between us.
I don't know a lot of people, but my Venmo activity feed of friends has at least a dozen transactions a week. I have ~300 FB friends and about half that in Venmo "friends".
She viewed it like a newer paypal. She has paid friends with it, and they have paid her with it.
Our use case tends to be for fantasy football, splitting vacation homes, hotels, bigger gifts for the parents, and other more expensive things. Replaces checks more than cash I'd say.
I am.
My neighbor's kid introduced me to it. Now I can't live without it. Being able to pay my maid or gardener when I'm not home... priceless. I never carry cash or a wallet any more. Slip an ID card in my phone case... good to go.
Basically if you're doing a transaction with an untrusted person the time it takes for things to clear means you can be taken advantage of.
Venmo has a similar dispute system and you can often bounce on credit card too.
I didn't use it until I shared an apartment with some friends who were ~15 years younger than me. Every single one of their cohorts used it, all the time.
Also, beer example was just meant to highlight that friend we all have who practices "selective accounting" with our informal running tab. If I had any suspicion that $3 is make or break to someone I would gladly pay them what's owed and forget about the beer. Beer (and all vices really) have their own set of norms.
So I worked at a factory and he was a notary or some such function connected with real estate, working from home. One day I was running late for work, which was maybe fifteen minutes away by bicycle, and asked if he didn't mind giving me a lift. About halfway there he mentioned casually, "Oh, just so you know, I'll be billing you at my normal rate ($60/hr) for this ride." Thanks for the trouble, just pull over and I'll walk, buddy.
People may or may not have sane ideas about friendship and money.
"I can't, I'm busy right now."
That's what people say when someone asks them to do something they don't want to, or where the cost outweighs the benefit.
If someone grabs a tab and sends me a Venmo bill, I'll happily send them their money. I would have rather grabbed the tab the next time. I won't be doing both.
(And vis a versa - If I say "I've got the tab" and the person sent me money, I'd be much less likely to invite them out in the future. I'd rather they just invited me out and grabbed a round.)
It took me a long time to learn that when your friend's dad tells you 'Please just call me John', continuing to address him as 'Mr. Smith' is less polite, not more. Same thing with money.
I had a landlord who wanted paid by check... I was able to set up an online bill pay with my credit union that automatically mailed out a physical check each month.
I was happy because I could automate it like I did my other bills, she was happy because she didn't have to pay credit card processing fees.
Explain to people why it is frustrating that they don't communicate how you're going to split things before doing it and don't expect anything back when you give away half a case of beer.
Both are equal offenses in the same class.
Maybe I'm just a tech-city millennial who hates interacting with people, but I've always kinda wondered why there isn't any POS system that prints out a QR or text code you can punch into your smartphone to pull up a digital receipt that you can claim what items were yours, auto-tally tax and tip, and just pay for it digitally or yes, even venmo-invoice everyone in the group.
Yes, I realize this is exactly the behavior the article was talking about it, but honestly, that article was a little "get off my lawn"-ish. If it's a beer, sure, I'll get a round, but if it's a 6-person birthday party where some people get the $12 salad because they're making teacher salary and the tech-bro's get the $36 steak but you all still want to be friends without the awkwardness different financial or socioeconomic situations getting in the way, then yes, everyone paying whatever they ordered makes sense.
Technology enables new behaviors and new norms, honestly.
If it means the guy or girl who gets 2x points on restaurant bills and making tech money fronts the bill and venmos what everyone ordered later, so be it. I would ask why isn't that even easier yet with my self-invoice-via-digital-bill-and-save-the-server-from-running-6-separate-cards app?
That said, the situation where someone ordered a $12 entree while someone else ordered a $36 one was solved when everyone paid in cash -- you just throw in your portion. It was only when everyone was trying to pay by card that this became an issue (which Venmo and ilk addressed).
People claiming that paying different amounts is some kind of "modern" problem are just ignorant of history -- everyone paying by card and splitting a bill being difficult is the modern problem.
That limit is artificially imposed though isn't? I also think this is mostly an American thing because its perceived as a "hassle" which is ironic because they're being tipped for their "service" in the US.
In Sweden I noticed for instance instance you can get a meal with a group of 10 people and at the end of the meal the server will walk around with card machine and run the individual cards at the table. It's not seen as a hassle at all just part of the job.
Back in Slovenia bill splitting doesn't exist. To me it's a completely American thing. The best they can do in Slovenia is charge everyone individually for their items, but that's not really bill splitting.
How much time time does it really take? Let's compare it to a single check with with cash as the form of payment. Some diner at the table needs to go through the bill and and collect the money or else the bill gets passed around and then everyone antes up their portion, there always come confusion about what something on the check is or who had what. Then you need to collect all the cash and make change for everyone. Then the server needs to settle the check at the register.
Is that really any lengthier than just splitting up the check for individual diners? I am doubting it.
This is where the time becomes an issue. Running each card can take awhile, and when you add up 4-5 cards, you get a real impact on time that the server can't be taking care of anything else. In a job that doesn't have a lot of downtime, 5-6 minutes tied to a computer can be detrimental.
So 1 person pays then says "Everyone venmo me $X" and the party leaves.
You'll often find people at a table fight each other to pay for the entire bill.
I used to wait tables and it's annoying to split many ways, but every POS system I ever used allowed splitting many ways. I never tested for an upper limit, but I soul routinely split to mid-teens of separate checks.
It's also not that uncommon to see the staff let you split the bill anyway on a case-by-case basis...
I do live in the UK where interbank transfer of cash is almost instant and free of charge, so the need for it is rather less, I suspect.
Even things like Google Wallet & Apple Pay seem to be treated with a “but... why?” attitude.
Young millennial male, I'd never heard of this thing until now. These things tend to be emblematic of poor local banking infrastructure. This reminds me a lot of echocash[1].
If I tried to pay anyone with it I can guarantee they'd say (a more polite version of) "WTF is that? No. Do you have money? Try money."
If you give me your kennitala and your bank account number (10 digits), I can send you any amount of money, no lower limit (there might be an upper one, I haven't tried buying a house GIRO) without paying a fee, regardless of which bank you're with.
When I sign a rental agreement with my landlord, I give him my kennitala and no other details. He sets up a recurring payment request linked to my kennitala. Every month, the bill shows up in my account with a request to pay it, but it's not like a credit card charge, it's merely a request for payment, kind of like the inverse of me inputting my landlords bank details and kennitala myself. I can ignore it if I want to.
Because the kennitala is independent from the bank, I can change banks and my landlords rental bill, along with all my utilities bills, will automatically start showing up on my new account without anyone doing anything.
Also, there's plenty of alternatives, bank transfers are usually the last resort. There's Revolut, Monzo, Ping It...
(UK perspective)
Unless you want to send money to someone who isn't using those services.
I just found that when I would try to send electronic checks here, people got weird about handing over their routing and account numbers. Sometimes I would even say, "You know, the numbers that are on every check you've ever issued." Didn't matter, there was still some weirdness about it.
That's definitely part of why I like Venmo and Square Cash. It's much closer to a unilateral transaction.
>I just found that when I would try to send electronic checks here, people got weird about handing over their routing and account numbers.
I think that uncertainty is definitely part of the problem. The criticality of keeping an SSN secret whilst paradoxically sometimes having to have it on hand to give to specific authorized people seems like a recipe for paranoia.
The honest truth is I don't know if US bank account numbers need to be kept secret. I would hope not, but I also wouldn't be that surprised if someone told me they did. I can understand people taking a defensive stance, but the fact that there is space for services like Venmo to exist is a direct sign that US banks are dropping the ball. Sending money between eachother more easily than using cash is practically the reason banks were invented (although certainly not the reason they are so big right now[1]).
That wouldn't bother me so much, except we've already been down this path. Paypal has rubbed it's name into the dirt by using it's position as an unregulated psudobank to "hold funds for investigation" and gather the interest, or to unilaterally close accounts and thus implicitly seize the funds within.
The idea of a vendor-locked payment system taking root really sits ill with me. It could cause major problems with paying rent or receiving wages for people who don't, won't or can't use compatible smartphones.
Yeah, they kind of should be since the number is basically all that someone needs in order to print cheques that take money out of a given account. The US has a "pull" system instead of the more secure "push" system in Europe where giving out a bank account number is totally normal (and was back in the day before electronic banking too).
Why? That's what they are for.
It can occasionally take up to an hour, but it's rare.
I agree that services like this only serve to fill gaps in antiquated banking systems. From what I understand, in Australia, for instance, people can send money easily for free between bank accounts and do so routinely without 3rd party services - including paying at stores. Circa 2009, a friend from Adelaide rolled eyes that we still used paper checks in the US. We still do.
The only time I've found cheques useful outside of paying for my rental bond (for which you need a bank cheque anyway) is when I've had to pay for something by posting in a form, and I don't feel like writing down all my credit card details on paper and having them stored rather insecurely.
The only other relatively common uses of cheques I hear of here are using bank cheques to exchange money when privately selling a car. Other than that, cheques are dead. As they should be.
man i quit doing that as soon as i could check my balance on the internet and just use a credit/debit card, just make sure you turn off 'overdraft protection' before doing this or you can dig a very deep hole of compound interest.
- signed, an early gen-xer
Using a card isn't some magic solution for someone struggling to manage their personal finances.
What's an example of local banking infrastructure that helps alleviate the problem of needing to pay people money with ease? I'm not even sure how it works on my Huntington mobile app. I know I could do it fairly painlessly with Simple bank. Except it's really only easy if they're a Simple user I think. Otherwise I'll need to get their physical address which will mail them an actual check, or ask for their routing/checking.
Chase Pay makes it pretty easy I think? But really people who sign up just to use that and attach a non-Chase account are doing the same thing as Square Cash, Paypal, Venmo, etc.
edit: huh, interesting. On a Simple bank FAQ page about paying third parties, it also links some additional services:
https://www.simple.com/help/articles/payments-and-transfers/...
Here are a few common and useful services:
* Google Wallet - https://www.google.com/wallet With Google Wallet, you can send money to anyone in the U.S. with their email address or phone number. You can link your Simple account with your card number or your account and routing numbers.
* PayPal - https://paypal.com PayPal offers a wide variety of services. If you’re planning to use PayPal with your Simple account, here’s what you need to know: We cannot link to Paypal accounts under a business name, since your Simple account is for personal use. Some PayPal services may incur a fee. One thing to keep in mind when linking your Simple account to Paypal is that when you're asked for the bank name, you'll need to enter the name of our partner bank, BBVA Compass, rather than Simple.
* Square Cash - https://cash.me Square Cash allows you to send money for free with your debit card. You don't need a username or a passphrase—just the email address for the person you'd like to pay and your debit card number. Transfers are often instant, but they can take up to 1-2 business days.
* Venmo - https://venmo.com With Venmo, you can send money to friends and even authorize other people to withdraw funds from your Venmo balance. Venmo can be hooked up to Simple with your card number (make sure it's marked as debit, not credit), your bank account number, or both.
* Xoom - https://www.xoom.com Xoom primarily used to send money internationally. They do charge fees, which is typical for this type of service.
Interac solved the P2P payments problem for every social group that I'm in there.
I actually use Venmo in Canada with friends that have US bank accounts because it's still more convenient even having to calculate the exchange rate.
Why can't you just "Paypal it to you"?
It's because Venmo adds the voyeuristic aspect to an otherwise boring task of money transfer that PayPal had been doing just fine.
Maybe I generally just know decent human beings though. Greediness/cheapness is just not a problem in my circles.
I'd also argue that using a Venmo doesn't take away the opportunity for someone to be generous. Venmo isn't much different from cash except that it makes it more convenient to be precise - it certainly doesn't force anyone to be precise though.
The guy who was nagging you to give him $3 cash for the cab ride is now requesting $3 from you on venmo for the uber, but it's the same guy, and he still needs to chill out and remember you split your case of beer with him last week.