

Payment startups disrupt traditional cash-transfer firms - caminante
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/here-comes-almost-free-money-1433715790-lMyQjAxMTA1MzAyODkwMTgxWj

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quadrangle
Is there reason to suspect Venmo, Dwolla, and their ilk of becoming privacy-
invading ad-focused systems (if they aren't already)? I.e. I worry the trend
is about tracking and ads, and _that 's_ the mechanism for eliminating fees vs
the more respectable approach of having a few specialty services that cost
something (the Craigslist model effectively).

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robbfitzsimmons
I actually can't say I really mind the "privacy-invading" here because
financial systems are already about the most heavily resold data there is,
with the people who are currently charging you the fees (your bank and credit
card) making billions off it.

If somebody can take the same data, package it up more nicely, and make the
economics work to eliminate fees, I actually don't think we're worse off?

~~~
quadrangle
I think if Venmo and Dwolla track all your purchases and did things like share
your purchase history with third-party advertisers who might use it elsewhere,
that's a real concern. I haven't inspected their privacy policies but am more
concerned about their _future_ privacy policies.

If it were as benign as them showing some ads themselves but not sharing any
data with anyone else, I agree that it would be worth the trade-off, but it
would _still_ be a compromise we'd want to reference in all conversations
about this. I haven't seen any reference to these issues at all yet, so I'm
just speculating and being cynical.

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jackgavigan
Strange article. Conflates a bunch of different things: Bitcoin, digital
wallets (Venmo), card payments (Visa), currency exchange (Transferwise), and
international money transfer (Western Union, Moneygram).

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blowski
In the context of this article, from an end user perspective these are all
solutions to the problem of sending money internationally. They may be very
different technologies on the back end, but they all compete with each other
on the front end.

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Retric
For the most part checks and EFT have no fees when used inside the US. Making
fees to send money to friends an odd tradeoff.

~~~
ryanackley
This really isn't the case. Some banks provide free electronic transfers to
account holders at the same bank and third parties they have agreements with
(i.e. billpay).

It's quite possible when performing an EFT, for the sending party's bank to
charge a fee and also for the receiving party's bank to also charge a fee. I'm
speaking from experience.

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kolev
I've paid people outside BofA without paying a penny.

