
Stop Sending Money on Venmo. There Are Better Alternatives - gnicholas
https://www.wired.com/story/venmo-alternatives/
======
elvinyung
(Disclaimer: I am an engineer at Square, but this comment is mostly unrelated
to that.)

A while ago I read a 2010 New Yorker profile on Mark Zuckerberg [1], which
still had a relatively exuberant "make the world more open" rhetoric. How
things have changed.

I think it's a really good thing that the world in general is lashing back
against the share-everything tendency of modern network-platforms. This isn't
(or isn't just) about the trails of data that you're putting out because
everyone else is also doing it (shameless self-promotion: [2]), but also
pushing back against the implicit societal pressure to putting effort into
maintaining online presence as "performances" of the self, as Alice Marwick
[3] and danah boyd [4] have analyzed, among others.

The world doesn't need Facebook, and it doesn't need a Facebook for money.

[1] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-
fa...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-facebook)

[2] [https://www.notion.so/The-Bottom-Up-Surveillance-
State-8ea9a...](https://www.notion.so/The-Bottom-Up-Surveillance-
State-8ea9a6e019e14ef7ae4f3ef0ffb35984)

[3] [https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300209389/status-
update](https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300209389/status-update)

[4] [http://www.tiara.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/05/Marwick_boyd...](http://www.tiara.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/05/Marwick_boyd_TweetHonestly.pdf)

------
gnicholas
I wonder how much of this backlash against Venmo would have materialized if it
hadn't been for the public-by-default transaction setting? I'm sure it
contributed to their growth, but now it might end up helping bring them down
(or at least out of first place).

------
bpanon
It works. It's free. Who cares if there's something better? What a stupid
headline.

------
smt88
No Venmo competitor is even close to being better (for me) because everyone I
know uses Venmo. I understand it's somewhat regional and may also be
influenced by age, income, etc. But even with strangers, they always accept
it.

I don't care about the rest of the features, for the most part.

