
Introducing Snapcash - kevando
http://blog.snapchat.com/post/102895720555/introducing-snapcash
======
jordanthoms
Meanwhile, everybody outside the US is trying to figure out how it's taken so
long for easy person-to-person payments to happen there.

Here in NZ, you've been able to pay directly to someone's bank account number
for free for as long as I can remember, and my bank introduced payments to
mobile numbers, facebook accounts, and email addresses 3 years ago. (Oh and
it's totally safe to broadcast your account number to everyone, most companies
have it listed on their website. No way to pull money from it through ACH
without their permission).

~~~
Negitivefrags
As someone else from NZ I would like to second this. We got a US bank account
for our company and I was surprised how archaic the US banking industry is.

Another thing very interesting in NZ/AU is EFTPOS. EFTPOS is like the credit
card system only with no transaction costs. Any shop in NZ/AU will take it.

The original business model for EFTPOS was that the user pays a fixed charge
per transaction. I think it was something like 20c originally. However,
because each bank was free to charge it's customers whatever it pleased for
EFTPOS, price competition very quickly reduced that cost to zero (Which to be
fair is what the actual cost of a purely electronic transaction should be).

There is no reason not to pay for even the most trivial purchase with EFTPOS
so I haven't carried cash around in my entire life.

The only reason everyone still uses credit cards as well is for online
purchases. EFTPOS is in person only. The number on the front of the card has
no ability to be used for making a payment.

I think the place where VISA is starting to get more inroads into the NZ
market is with NFC. NFC is getting more prevalent, and we are also starting to
see things like this turn up as well:
[https://www.asb.co.nz/paytag/](https://www.asb.co.nz/paytag/)

~~~
jpmattia
> EFTPOS is like the credit card system only with no transaction costs.

Somebody is picking up the tab. Is it the merchants? or the banks? gov't
(=taxes)?

~~~
Negitivefrags
The merchant has to buy (or rent) an EFTPOS terminal. The bank also charges
the merchant a setup fee to connect your terminal to your bank account. Once
that has been done there are no more fees.

You have to look at the way it evolved. Because this is a service offered to
customers by each bank in competition with each other, the competition drove
the price per transaction to zero.

~~~
jpmattia
> the competition drove the price per transaction to zero.

So the customers are paying. The banks just build it into the banking fees.

It's not like that infrastructure is free.

~~~
aragot
> so the customers are paying.

Yeah. Kindof. NAB has the debit card account free of charge, unlimited ATM
withdrawals, transfers across banks free and attractive savings rates. CBA's
fee is $5/mo unless you get a salary per month through your account. Pretty
much the same for the 4 major banks.

In France you need to pay 60-120€/year for an account + CC. In Australia you
don't need to pay. In US don't they beg you to open a credit card?

~~~
jpmattia
> _In US don 't they beg you to open a credit card?_

Yeah, pretty much. If you are responsible, you get back 1% of all of your
purchases on the CC. And in the spirit of "who pays for that", it's the folks
carrying a balance who pay for the 1% cash back on everything.

~~~
mgkimsal
it's not the people carrying a balance that pay for that - it's the merchants.
it's an extra fee added on to the credit card fee that a merchant can't
predict nor can they avoid.

As a merchant, I charged people, say... $10 for something. The fee might be
2.9%, but if it was 'rewards card' (which I can't tell ahead of time) the
charge would show up as 4%.

The cost is passed on to every in the form of higher prices. The people
carrying a balance have nothing to do with this. That would simply eat in to
the banks' profits. Why would they just randomly give people x% of the profits
from balance-accrued interest?

~~~
tomp
Hm... I wonder who gets the extra 0.1%.

~~~
mgkimsal
Hrm.... indeed.

It's different. I've had some cards charge me > 4% - one was... 5% IIRC. I
think it was an Amex.

------
david_shaw
I think the primary challenge is convincing users that it's secure. Snapchat
has a relatively poor reputation in security (whether that's deserved or not),
and everyone I know just uses Venmo. Venmo has Facebook integration, so if
you're Facebook friends, it's really easy to send money.

It seems like integrating into a platform that's supposed to be ethereal is a
weird fit, but who knows -- maybe it'll catch on.

~~~
free2rhyme214
I disagree. The primary users of Snapchat aren't worried about security.

~~~
serve_yay
They also aren't currently sending each other money. I hate to be a naysayer
to what I think is a pretty cool product, but Snapchat's terrible security
reputation is well-deserved. But also this isn't very much differentiated from
sending money with Gmail, Square, etc.

~~~
thatmatt
I think the point is that they ARE sending eachother money, just in less
efficient ways. Looking at how people use snapchat it isn't as much about
ephemeral as it is about speed. It's much easier to send a picture to someone
in snapchat as the flow is better, and it doesn't leave a stupid photo on your
phone (and on several cloud backups) that you didn;t want to stick around
forever (e.g. check out this awesome car, you don't need a copy of that)

I thought this move was awesome. In my 17-25 year old life my friends and I
were constantly owing eachother money for random things. If someone could pay
me back right there for no charge that would have been my dream. We debated
building an app for it at one point, just to tally who owes who what. It was a
big enough issue I carried an excel doc but not enough to go out and search a
standalone app for it. If the function is easily integrated into an app I use
for something similar, however, I feel like I may pick it up.

Also teenagers aren't using gmail or square, etc. now so if snapchat can take
them over before university they have a better chance of winning, imo. I do
believe this is a market to be won going forward, at least in that 17-25
demographic (also why bitcoin got me excited, no fees for small transactions
is a REQUIREMENT for person to person payments).

~~~
evilduck
> and it doesn't leave a stupid photo on your phone (and on several cloud
> backups) that you didn;t want to stick around forever (e.g. check out this
> awesome car, you don't need a copy of that)

You should probably research Snapchat's history and behaviors.

~~~
who_are_you
the OP's argument sounds more like one of convenience though -- I don't
_really_ care if there's a cached copy of my awesome car picture somewhere.. I
just don't want to see it in my main photo app.

------
Balgair
Whats that old jwz quote: "Every program attempts to expand until it can read
mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

I think there is a corollary too, though I cannot attribute it: "Every social
media site attempts to expand until it becomes a bank. Those companies which
cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

------
otterley
Underage nudity and quick cash sending? What could possibly go wrong?

~~~
crazypyro
....Because that's not possible today with current technology?

edit: I seriously don't understand how you immediately jump to that being the
new functionality when sending payments today is as simple as logging into
paypal or any numerous other payments sites.... Not to mention the age
requirement of 18? This comment is just fear mongering.

~~~
enneff
I really can't see teenagers setting up a PayPal account in order to receive
money for nudes.

I can, however, see someone asking for cash through the very same app that
they're using to send nude pictures.

I agree with the GP, this is gonna get interesting.

~~~
crazypyro
Setting up a PayPal account and setting up an age-locked account that requires
an associated bank account (in the form of a debit card) appears to be more
effort on the SnapChat payments side, at least to me. The only reason for this
fear (which really should be associated with any social media micro-payments
system) being touted here is because of the reputation of SnapChat as an app
for sending nude pictures. The same exact concerns exist in other places and
have been dealt with by a large number of companies at this point.

~~~
otterley
> The same exact concerns exist in other places and have been dealt with by a
> large number of companies at this point

Can you identify a similar set of circumstances where this has been successful
for more than a brief period?

~~~
crazypyro
My point was any company that deals with a large amount of user submitted
media will eventually end up having to have an abuse team that monitors user
submissions for illegal activity. I don't see how the Snapchat's situation is
unique from the problem of identifying illegal material, other than the fact
that there is now a monetary way of receiving payment (which has existed and
still exists today). In fact, Snapchat could even attempt to claim less
liability if the material is never stored on their servers, compared to a file
sharing or image hosting site that actually contains the illegal material. In
this sense, they would only be liable if they knowingly allowed this trade to
take place on their network, similar to an ISP, in my view.

------
jfernandez
Maybe I'm crazy (and admittedly a little old) but I like the separation of my
social and financial software "zones". I know there are tremendous reasons to
incorporate this directly into a social product but I just can't shake that
feeling.

Am I alone in this or does everyone here on HN embrace this with arms wide
open for _actual_ use (vs experimenting or playing around with new products)?

~~~
untog
But what about social financial software?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want my online banking in Snapchat. But sending
money to friends is a very different action - it's inherently public, for one.

~~~
austinhutch
Public? It is a private transaction between two parties. This is why I don't
understand Venmo's interface that tells me about transactions that I'm not
involved in. I always set my payments to private, admittedly it does make for
an interesting feed to browse for those who transact publicly.

------
joshstrange
I have been a long time user of Venmo and have tried to get a number of my
friends on it but most of my friends consider entering their routing/account
numbers (if they even know what those are...) into an app and waiting a couple
days too much work. They even consider Square Cash too much of a hassle but I
can see all of those same friends using Snapcash without issue. I consider
Venmo to be the best in this space currently (But come on! Allow using debit
cards to receive money already!) and I don't mind the 1-3 day delay in cashing
out but I will still enter my debit card in snapchat cause at the end of the
day I'm going to use the service that allows me to pay and get paid by the
highest number of friends.

~~~
kevando
I never found that to be an issue getting friends to sign up for Venmo. You
don't need to enter any info to accept cash. It was getting them to realize
this was cash and not some magic points (because they dont know what venmo
is). Snapchat should kill it here because people already understand and trust
(for the most part) Snapchat and this is just a new feature - not an entirely
new service to learn.

~~~
joshstrange
Recently I have been taking the approach of "I sent you $15 for XYZ on Venmo
if you want it you need to signup" because it's one of the few ways I can get
them to do it. I hate to hold their money hostage like that but if I don't
there isn't a great way for me to give them money other than paying for them
up to what I owe them the next time we hang out (which I am bound to forget).

I agree, I feel like Snapchat/cash will kill in this space due to ease of use.

~~~
Robadob
If I was every paying people money regularly, I always just found sending the
money via bacs through online banking to be easiest.

~~~
joshstrange
I would do this if I lived in the UK but I live in the US where we only have
ACH and even that's not really close to BACS.

------
dkyc
If we are really in a bubble, this video will be one of the things people will
point to shaking their heads 5 years from now.

------
ndomin
50% of snapchat users are under 18 [1]. which this video seems to clearly
target (production style is fun, quirky, light hearted, even the actors are
young). Yet they require a debit card and the use to be 18+. I guess they are
hoping their young users stick with it for a few more years.

[1] [http://www.statista.com/statistics/315398/snapchat-user-
age-...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/315398/snapchat-user-age-
distribution/)

~~~
notahacker
In fairness, the other 50% of Snapchat users is quite a large number of
people.

I'm assuming their VC-backers are hoping to see traction without waiting for
the underage half of the user base to grow up, and are really hoping it
doesn't become the fun, friction-free and ephemeral way for that demographic
to send their friends funds from their parents' bank account.

------
jnks
Square loses something like 25 cents per Square Cash transaction [1], and now
they want more transactions? I wonder if Snapchat is paying those fees, and if
so how they think they're going to make that money back from their users.

[1] [http://qz.com/248572/squares-search-for-a-viable-business-
mo...](http://qz.com/248572/squares-search-for-a-viable-business-model-just-
got-more-desperate-thanks-to-amazon/)

~~~
smackfu
Yeah, it's odd. Competitors like Venmo rely on not putting the money directly
into the recipients bank account until they cash out. So they can make a
little interest money off that directly, and more importantly, any
transactions that come off of someone's balance are free since they are just
moving money around inside their computers.

------
abalone
The economics of this are fascinating. Square loses money on every Square cash
transaction, at least 22 cents to be exact.[1]

The _potential_ justification for that is to promote the Square brand, get
cards registered, and maybe hopefully drive usage of other (future) premium
products/features that generate actual revenue. So, basically a marketing
expense.

Here they're wrapping it in _another company 's app and brand_, Snapchat.

Which still gets cards registered but, presumably, Snapcash users are gonna
typically come back through Snapchat to do more transactions, letting Snapchat
tax any future premium revenue.

Really weird and.. shall I say it.. bubbly..(shhhhhhhhhh!!!)

[1] Visa debit interchange is $0.21 + 0.05%
[http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/visa-usa-
interchange-...](http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/visa-usa-interchange-
reimbursement-fees-april2013.pdf)

------
MrJagil
I believe we in Denmark are very lucky to have one of the best banking systems
in regards to keeping up with technological development.[1][2]

Snapcash seems to be the first app that approaches what we've had for a while
now: [http://danskebank.dk/en-dk/personal/ways-to-
bank/pages/mobil...](http://danskebank.dk/en-dk/personal/ways-to-
bank/pages/mobilepay.aspx)

[1]Except for Japan and all their NFC stuff...
[2][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NemID](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NemID)
has been WILDLY debated though.

~~~
Systemic33
Ye, MobilePay is pretty solid among people in Denmark, and there's even the
competitor (competitor is a nice word, considering i've never heard of anyone
with it) Swipp.

~~~
MrJagil
Yeah, just saw my first Swipp combercial the other day. Reminded me of
[http://currentc.com/](http://currentc.com/) (i.e. bullshit).

------
angryasian
so now people can pay for sexting/nudes, actually sounds like a good use case

~~~
edkennedy
I predict that use and paying a local drug dealer will be the primary use in
the demographic they go for.

~~~
crazypyro
I can't imagine any drug dealer would want to put their transactions into a
bank account, at least if they sell anything more than casually.

------
skizm
As much as I like competition, I hate entering my bank info into a lot of
different places. I've been successfully ignoring venmo (in favor of paypal)
for a while for the sole reason I don't want my info on more sites than
necessary.

Seems like a lot of companies are trying to solve the "I hate entering my bank
info into a lot of different places" problem, but it is only making the
problem worse when half of my friends use one system and the other half use
the other.

Someone needs to come up with a meta solution to sending money that doesn't
involve me giving more companies direct access to my bank info.

(cue crypto-currency advocates)

~~~
cylinder
fwiw paypal owns venmo.

~~~
skizm
Oh really? did not know that. Can I link accounts?

------
dkyc
The guys at Snapchat seem to be completely crazy. But maybe that's exactly
what it takes to succeed in the really weird business of replacing cash
payments. No matter what, I'm still lying on the floor laughing. _Send money
easy, it 's all so breezy, Snapchat with Snapcash. Chat any cash amount -
straight from your bank account! Send money easy, it's fast and greasy!
Snapcash Snapcash Snapcash in Snapchat!_

------
mmanfrin
Installed it, none of my coworkers can figure out how to actually send cash,
or send anything. Right now it looks like a 'take a picture and add a dollar
amount' photo app, except you can't export, can't send, can't do anything but
take more app-only picture-expenditure receipts.

e: Looks like it's not actually snapcash -- but another so-named app. Looks
like someone is getting a ton of unintentional downloads today.

~~~
arnorhs
For me, it was simply a "snapcash" entry in the settings screen in the
snapchat app.

You click it and put in your payment info before you can use the feature.

I'm on the Android app though, I heard from coworkers that the iOS one doesn't
have it yet.

~~~
expose
You're correct -- I'm on iOS/iPhone 5 and I don't have the option yet.

------
kin
I use a lot of different methods to send money to friends. Venmo is by far the
easiest, but I still commonly have to ask people to sign up for Venmo.

Snapchat has tons of users. If this is just a new feature built-in, it's
pretty easy to tell someone to link their debit card vs. signing up for Venmo
and linking their bank account. Plus, the ability to send friends money w/ a
picture attachment is kind of fun I guess.

------
minimaxir
Facebook + Paypal vs. Snapchat + Square.

That's a pretty fair fight.

~~~
crazypyro
I think Facebook + Paypal has huge advantages, so I can't tell if you are
being sarcastic or not.

------
Robadob
In the UK one of the banks (Barclays) has setup a mobile app PingIt for this
same concept.

Someone sent me money with it, had to sign up to receive it. Due to what I
imagine is UK banking laws, a large amount of id/proof of address was required
to fully register my account, so that I could also send money.

To verify my address they send a snail mail letter out with a verification
code, being a student away at university (moving house every 12 months), I
used my parents address. 3 weeks later when I was back home I attempted to
verify my address, only to find the code had expired (despite it never
mentioning anywhere that it must be done within x days). After rejecting the
code, the app appeared to wipe all data regarding my account, now asking me to
sign up from the beginning again.

This experience has really ruined my hopes, for a system I was already
reluctant to enter.

~~~
jarek
Pingit is Barclays' implementation of a UK-wide system called Paym. If you
already have a UK bank account and a UK mobile phone number, sending money
with Paym to anyone who also has those things only requires the recipient's
mobile number.

------
habosa
Unless they have changed something under the hood I would NOT trust this
service due to the insecure nature of the Snapchat API.

There are many 3rd-party API clients for Snapchat that can access all parts of
the API (send message, send picture, get picture, etc.). I even wrote one for
Java. They are easily accessed from a console with a username/password combo.

Considering how many password dumps are out there, it's reasonable to assume
that many people have had their Snapchat login credentials compromised. Now I
can use that info, log in from a command line, and start "snapping" myself
money.

I know that getting someone's username/password is a pretty high barrier, but
not high enough for the ability to send money instantly. Maybe there are more
security details, but I wouldn't put my info into this just yet.

~~~
kxo
How do you propose Snapchat, a company primarily producing a mobile
application, prevent usage of its API?

You act like someone can't (with your username and password) (automatically or
otherwise) scrupulously transact on your behalf with PayPal.

If you have the username/password - in a non-MFA system - you have access to
everything.

~~~
habosa
True. One problem specific to Snapchat is that there are already a ton of 3rd
party clients that users trusted with their username and password. That
user/pass combo now suddenly has the potential for financial abuse without any
new permissions. It's bad to add scope to previously granted authentication,
especially when you're talking about finance.

------
jackgavigan
I suspect that the impetus behind this wasn't Snapchat thinking "Hey, we
should add a payments feature!", so much as some Square bizdev guy convincing
Snapchat to add payments.

Payments is a highly competitive and commoditised market, which means that
margins are under intense pressure (what I like to call a "Race to Zero"). The
industry will "consolidate" around a few winners, and those winners will be
the companies that successfully execute on the strategy of "Reduce the
incremental cost per transaction to as close to zero as possible, and pump up
the volume".

Everyone is desperate for volume, so every payments company is desperately
trying to strike up as many partnerships like this as they can. Any app or
website that has lots of users is a prime target.

~~~
wtracy
Interesting. I would have expected the impetus to be Snapchat thinking, "We
have lots of users. How do we monitize them?"

------
untog
This kind of thing will be the death of Venmo, and makes me wonder why they
haven't moved faster. An app that already has your social network will have
more success adding friend payments than your friend payments app trying to
add a social network.

~~~
kevando
I never had an issue finding people on Venmo. It was more the barrier of
getting people to download Venmo, so I agree this will probably crush venmo.

~~~
untog
Finding people that are already on Venmo, sure. But I meant that when you
start a new social network you have zero users, and that's a problem.

------
johnnyn
Is Instagram going to release Instacash now?

------
pizzashark
1\. Look over someone's shoulder to get their phone password 2\. Take phone
discreetly 3\. Enter phone, add self on snapchat, put money in Swiss bank
account 4\. Put phone back in person's pocket

~~~
ricardobeat
Congratulations, you have +$250 in your swiss bank account.

------
rebel
Seems like this is laying the groundwork for them to begin offering flash
sales. Now they can send you a picture/video of a product and give you a
limited amount of time to purchase it at a special price. This won't work
without having payment methods on file though, and they won't be able to move
worthwhile product without getting a base of cards on file first. That's the
only logical business I see evolving from this move.

~~~
omfg
Or pushing the 'cash for pics / videos' .. industry? further. It already
exists, now it's even easier.

~~~
rebel
Although it works for that, I feel like that would be more of a carrot for
users so that they can transition to a more reputable business model. They can
use that for a short time to get the card data, but then begin selling their
own goods etc. I would be surprised if they left it at this considering how
young their userbase is. Mixing 'cash for pics' with a userbase predominantly
under 18 in a multi-billion dollar business does not sound like a good idea to
me.

------
sahara
This may be the first big move towards "Snapchat as America's Tencent"[0], and
although there are red flags all over the place and that video (especially the
software-eats-making-it-rain bit) is absurd, I get the feeling this might
actually work.

[0] [http://www.businessinsider.com/andreessen-
snapchat-2014-1](http://www.businessinsider.com/andreessen-snapchat-2014-1)

------
denisnazarov
The "making it rain" looks a lot like Stacks.
[http://rainstacks.com/](http://rainstacks.com/)

------
steakejjs
Seems like this might impose on Clinkle quite a bit? Who is going to download
clinkle when they can do the same thing from snapchat?

Seems neat to me, and pretty unexpected. One scary thing is just how bad a lot
of passwords are for mobile applications. I'm sure it is even easier to brute
force passwords on mobile and send a snapcash to yourself

~~~
josephpmay
People are already using Venmo. Nobody is going to switch to Snapcash or
Clinkle.

~~~
derwiki
But Venmo hasn't won. Outside the Valley, I don't know anyone who uses it.
(although, mostly the same with SquareCash)

~~~
djhunt
I was surprised to come here and see all the positives for Venmo. I have zero
interest in a payment service that is going to hold my money until I request a
cash out. Here in the midwest, I've been able to convince suburban parents to
use Square Cash via the email cc feature. It's about as painless as it can
get, particularly when they still send checks around to each other all the
time.

------
kevando
I love this because it looks just as simple as Venmo, but I don't need to
convince people to download the app.

~~~
driverdan
You don't need to download anything to use Venmo, you can use their website.

~~~
smackfu
I think "download" was a shorthand for "sign-up". Signing up for a payments
service is pretty friction-ful.

------
UweSchmidt
Even if you've posted a skeptical comment, do you doubt that one day sending
money in a chat app will be totally normal?

When it's there it could be the foundation of hundreds of new business models
and applications, and the reason a few household names went the way of
Myspace...

------
chipgap98
I'm interested to see if people start using this over venmo. Everyone already
has snapchat, so the only thing users have to do now is put in their
credit/debit card.

------
leeber
Hopefully they require a password or a PIN each time you send a message with
cash in it.

Otherwise anybody could steal money from you as long as they can get into your
phone and open snapchat.

~~~
Vraxx
Square uses the CVC number on the back of the card as a pin for this
currently. It's not the most secure way to handle it imo, but it does stop the
general user from picking up a phone and stealing all their money from
snapchat (if this feature carries over to snapcash).

~~~
leeber
Strange, why not just have the user choose a password or a typical 4-digit
pin? This would still be way more secure than using the CVC number.

------
oldpond
The music industry could really use this. Stream your music to an application,
user likes the song, taps a button, you get 5 moneys, the user gets the song
on their device.

------
mvarner
Ah yes, I definitely want this company with a super-insecure app to handle my
money. If they fix Snapchat's API vulnerabilities (from 2013!) maybe I'd
consider it.

------
dzhiurgis
A slight off topic, but how the fact that Apple Pay does not accept payments
slipped thru?

I mean possibility of using iPad as POS is huge. I guess they will introduce
it with iOS 9.

------
cheshire137
Trusting Snapchat to be anywhere near my money is laughable.

------
xenophin
Paid for porn industry will carve out a niche - probably disrupt entire
industry. Other users wont touch it. Guaranteed revenue for snapchat though.

~~~
dmix
I love reading HN's wild speculation about other companies businesses that
they come to after reading a headline or two.

Just like the countless comments here, years ago, expecting Twitter to die
because it won't make money.

------
dang
Also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8620320](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8620320).

------
htor
Ugh. This video makes me physically ill. The idea is fine, but why this
horrible marketing? The world is not Las Vegas.

------
Animats
Everybody wants to be a bank.

Then they discover how much support effort goes into stopping, or untangling
frauds, scams, and robberies.

~~~
drivingmenuts
Well, if Uber ever becomes a bank, they'll just push that off to the cashier
or end user and problem solved.

------
goshx
I keep checking my calendar and it says November 17, not April 1... hmmm is it
broken?

------
MattGrommes
The first thing people should think of when talking about anything Snapchat
does is "How is this going to be used to abuse underage girls?" They've built
the company on that so far, no reason to think this won't be used (and tacitly
allowed by Snapchat) for the same.

~~~
mwerd
This makes no sense to me. 1) why are you singling out girls? 2) I was under
the impression most of the minors sharing lewd photos on snapchat were sharing
them with other minors. Sexuality in adolescents is pretty normal and healthy
from my own experience and what I've read. The medium is fresh but afaik the
behavior isn't. Therefore, I think "abuse" is hardly the appropriate word.

If you're insinuating that predators are using this software and snapchat is
somehow protecting them, they've been pretty clear about cooperating with law
enforcement in the past: [http://blog.snapchat.com/post/64036804085/who-can-
view-my-sn...](http://blog.snapchat.com/post/64036804085/who-can-view-my-
snaps-and-stories)

I don't use the app, I think it's silly, but lots of my peers (20somethings)
do and have been of age since the app existed. It's not built on abusing
underage girls. It's a low friction sharing platform. Blaming the users'
behavior/content choices on the platform seems asinine.

~~~
MattGrommes
Abuse from peers and the community at large for sending nudes is heaped on
girls vastly more than boys. I singled out girls for that reason although boys
have certainly be subject to harassment. I absolutely think it's abuse for
groups of boys targeting girls to "collect" their nudes for sharing and girls
to take the pictures of other girls for use as bullying / shaming fodder.

Snapchat encouraged the idea that nobody but the receiver could ever see your
photos, even though they knew this wasn't true. This takes perfectly normal
sexual experimentation and turns it into a bullying service which they have
done nothing about. Yes, it's the users' behavior but when a company aims at a
young audience and then doesn't seem to care about their safety that it turns
into something they're responsible for.

~~~
mwerd
When I was in high school there was a similar shaming incident with a girl and
a VHS tape. It's not the medium that's the problem. While I think the majority
of the HN community would agree that snapchat has serious security issues,
once the images leave the victim's handset it's a hopeless situation. In
digital media if it's consumable it's reproducible (just need another camera).
That's the lesson for the kids--not this app is or isn't "safe" for nudie
pics.

I don't really see a good way to address the bullying issue. It's been more
than a decade since I received my first lecture on the permanence of content
published to the internet (by my 70ish year old school librarian no less).
This isn't a new problem and it seems there's no shortage of regrets out on
the WWW. It's safe to say the jury is still out on
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_be_Forgotten](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_be_Forgotten)
which is what I gather is at least the spirit of what you're advocating?

IMO who's responsible here are the kids and vicariously the parents. The
parents need to educate their kids, pay attention to what the kids are doing,
and support their bullied kids--even through the justice system if necessary.
Less nudie pics created and more punishments of blackmailers are about the
only things I think will help. Maybe snapchat not being so naive/deceptive
with their security would help in the short term but my bet is any of the 100
other "secure" messaging apps would fill the sucker/idiot gap pretty quickly.

------
msoad
That video clearly states that Snapchat is a Los Angeles based company!

------
Xyik
Seems like it could be easy to accidentally send someone money.

------
sararschreiber
just about two weeks ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8557170](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8557170)

------
Trillip
And... this is when Snapchat turned into MFC

------
fra
This video must have cost a pretty penny.

------
jmuguy
I wonder if this is replacing Squarecash?

~~~
chipgap98
I think this is being built on top of square cash.

------
0x0
Does it work outside the US?

~~~
rasmusrygaard
Looks like the answer is no:

"For now, Snapcash is available to Snapchatters in the United States who have
a debit card and are 18 or older."

------
Soyuz
hot girls will be the richest in the world now :p

------
Jamie452
Is this like an early April Fools day joke?

------
guillermovs
Disappearing cash!

------
michaelochurch
It was dark at 5:30. April 1 can be cold but not dark at 5:30. Something is
amiss... Has the earth's axis shifted?

For a serious response, this deserves to fail. To do anything with payments
requires being careful. Snapchat is not careful, and even in ridiculous bubble
times, no one is claiming otherwise. If you even trust Evan Spiegel with a bag
of rock salt, you're a damnable fool.

That horrid video, by the way, is just another thing that's going to be used
when people ask "What the fuck were they thinking?" about Tech Bubble 2.0. I
just hope that these jokers don't take a bunch of legitimate startups down
with them. It makes me angry to see these asswipes getting so much press,
because for every Evan Spiegel there are 10 people with genuine ideas who
struggle to get funding after these jokers let their investors down.

Also, if you use "Snapcash" as a verb I will fucking cut you.

------
dokem
What an awkward monetization scheme. Seriously, this is why you passed up x
billion dollars? Should've taken the money and tried to actually help the
world. Silicon Valley greed and delusion at it's finest.

~~~
mikeg8
I still don't understand how they monetize from this at all. Square cash
(which this is built on) has no fees...

------
arasmussen
> "After you enter your debit card, it’s securely stored by Square, who will
> swiftly process your payment and send cash directly to your friend’s bank
> account."

That first comma makes that sentence so hard to read..

