

Text Your Bill Venmo.com - keltecp11
http://thedp.com/article/text-your-bill-venmo

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dbrown26
It appears that they take payments in as deposits and then disburse the money
when another user requests a withdrawal. This requires either a bank charter
or a designation as a money transfer agency. Without one of those, they are
running an unlicensed bank. You cannot hold the money as an intermediary in
the US without satisfying one of those requirements. I don't see anything on
the site about either one of them, but knowing at least a little about the
capital requirements needed to get one or both of those I would doubt that
they have them. Please correct me if I am wrong, I think mobile payments is an
idea who's time is past due but its very difficult to pull off in the US.

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ivankirigin
I know the guys that make it, and they're solid. Check it out:
<http://venmo.com>

It has been done before, but it hasn't caught on yet in the US. I'm not sure
why. It does fine elsewhere - but the configuration is usually through the
carrier.

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andreyf
_I'm not sure why._

This isn't US-specific, but according to the PayPal interview in Founders at
Work, the problem is fraud.

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ivankirigin
Well, I would trust a notification of a text message than a submission of a
form from a potentially phished account. Then the issue is stolen cards, and
ramp-up of merchants and payers is a good way to limit risk.

I think this is a user issue. People don't currently pay with there phones.
There are a bunch of options for it.

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ivey
Stolen cards is a huge issue. I actually think being a smaller "Penn students
and surrounding businesses" type of play would make it easier...there's less
incentive for the online-only stolen card gangs to take over.

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rishi
Pretty Cool.

But what happens if you don't have a venmo account and you pay the restaurant
and then decide when you get home not to create an account? Do they somehow
charge you through your phone bill?

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pwmanagerdied
Like most services, you need to be registered and have payment methods set up
before you can make payments.

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iqram
As a first time user, you can actually complete your purchase at the point of
purchase. There's no pre-registration required and through texting and a phone
call you can add your payment information and notify the restaurant of your
payment.

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pwmanagerdied
Ah, I didn't realize that you could add payment info from your phone. I'm not
sure how safe I'd feel about that.

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rflrob
How does Venmo make money off of this? Do they charge the sender? In the
article, a vendor says, "they’re not charging us any transaction fee"

