The author is trying to get on the outrage train when there is no compelling reason for it. The college kids he cites? A project with 2 likes. Splitting a Papa Johns pizza? Killer use case. OP seems to be grasping at straws to find concrete reasons for the API to exist.
"Drivers, dog walkers, handymen" are mentioned but author doesnt include an actual example - those were all examples supplied by Venmo itself...3 years ago. Who are the developers hes talking about when he says "community that stuck with Venmo"?
And finally, unlike Twitter, which has an plethora number of ways to be consumed, searched and experienced that would be better as different apps - Venmo does not. Its just a P2P payment system.
The way I see it, Venmo has accomplished the following -
1. Deprecated old features (save resources, reduce complexity)
2. Found new way of building profitable and sustainable relationships w other businesses, rather than just a wild west API.
Terrible read, file this under- "How TO Run a Platform"
The biggest API integration I know of is Splitwise. Their Android app has 500K+ installs and it's probably the same ballpark on iOS, which puts them leagues above a college kid with 2 likes.
Splitwise will continue to work and run. The API is not being shut down, they are simply not authorizing new API applications. The article is wrong and massively misleading.
Because they are owned by Braintree (big payments processor) who is owned by PayPal (who used to be owned by eBay before being spun out to be independent)
I agree that the article's examples are great, but you don't need examples to convince me that a zero-warning API shut-off is a bad thing. Regardless of how many people are using the API (if it's non-zero), why not send them emails 3 months in advance? It costs you virtually nothing and almost certainly prevents this article from being written.
I agree that there might not have been concrete reasons for the API to exist (especially considering PayPal has their own API), but shutting down the API with no warning or migration plan was a mean move. Even if the only projects using it are small I still think the developers of them deserve some warning. They still worked hard on those projects and are probably proud of the work they did.
And this is why I never read TechCrunch articles. They are a tabloid, and as far as I can tell have no place on HN. The comments never seize to be amusing though.
The article is massively wrong and misleading. The API is NOT being shut down. Current applications can still work, but new ones are no longer being accepted.
I love that they're trying to pin this on Venmo, like it's somehow their problem and not a completely misleading article built on misinformation.
> Venmo seems to be confused. According to statement below from Venmo and the message on the developer site, the API is no longer available. But now Venmo tells me the API is still available to existing developers, but not to new ones, which can be a sign of an impending shut down. We’ll update with more info soon once Venmo figures itself out. Parts of this article have been changed for accuracy.
I think Venmo must have come under greater scrutiny. I was recently contacted by someone in their support and compliance team about a charitable donation I made to a Syrian refugee cause. I can't help to think that this particular contribution was flagged for some kind of potential Safe Harbor violation. I gave them the name of the charity and they moved on.
It could be that they shut down the api because of the difficulty of doing compliance for these third party apps, after falling under greater scrutiny by government regulation.
Or perhaps there was a specific incident that they're trying to get ahead of:
-hypothetical-
maybe the San Bernardino phone the FBI is trying to crack has Venmo transactions through a third party app that are now under scrutiny.
The fact this decision was made shows that non-engineers are calling all of the shots. Would love to hear from any engineer at venmo / paypal who can give the inside scoop
Never understood why/how Venmo gained so much popularity in the first place. Using it is not any easier than using PayPal, Square Cash, etc. The only differentiating feature I can think of is its newsfeed of friends' transactions (and it baffles me how anyone finds that interesting). Am I missing something?
It's a lot easier than Paypal to make an account and send money. Your friends and contacts are already loaded via whatever social network you OAuth[orized] the app through.
It is quite literally as easy as typing a friends name and having it auto completed. Typing in a number and hitting send.
Paypal might have an app that does something similar and it likely came after Venmo gained popularity. For most of us, who have been using Paypal since the 2000s, it might not seem logical, but Paypal UI experience does seem like an archaic UI experience by comparison even to me.
PayPal has had "send money to any email address" since the very beginning, or close to it. Yes the recipient has to then create a PayPal account, but that's usually not very painful.
When it launched, it was miles ahead of PayPal. You could sign up and be transferring money within 10 minutes, and to cash out, once you verified your account information, they actually delivered the money to your account quickly, often as soon as the next business day. PayPal, until recently, never delivered the money in a timely manner, not to mention all the freezes and holds that have them paying out a class action settlement.
As of now, I don't disagree. PayPal has successfully adopted most of the best parts of Venmo (though time to receive money remains the slowest of all the competitors) and Square Cash is miles ahead of both of them - the ability to send money to people who don't have an account, and allowing them to access that money without creating an account is simply fantastic. No more conversations with friends like "Look, I'm sorry I don't have cash right now. You can wait, or you can download Venmo and let me pay you now."
I think the most reasonable comparison would be with Square, and it's a question of marketing. While Square has p2p payment features it's marketing is mostly towards businesses with its tagline being "start selling today" right on its website. Venmo's tagline is "share payments," indicating they're marketing themselves mostly for p2p. Paypal is a bit of a pain to sign up in comparison with Venmo, which allows seamless Facebook Auth via your phone so is easier for people to sign up for. Kind of all irrelevant since Paypal owns Venmo anyway, but there you go.
On the one hand, it's obnoxious to create an API and encourage developers to use it, then pull the plug. On the other hand, APIs that process payments are a way to steal money, and tougher standards are necessary. Venmo has had security problems and fraud problems. Putting a fourth party in the chain (Venmo itself is a third party; it's not a bank, it's an external ACH transaction generator) makes it tough to allocate blame when something goes wrong.
That's unfortunate for anyone who was using the API. Not cool to just shut it off like that. However it seems Venmo has realized they are an app and not a platform.
Who thought this was a good idea? Are existing businesses using their API cut off, or just new sign-ups? How can existing businesses develop new or existing functionality on their platform? Cue in the "sorry we're not sorry" non-apology blog post in 72 hours.
This seems like a reasonable move by PayPal - except for the lack of a migration plan. Why not address it directly and offer a path to migrate to PayPal? It seems like they had an opportunity to gain all Venmo API users and instead, they threw them all away.
paypal apis have improved a lot since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4485627 but these occurrences takes paypal back again. looks like there are multiple developer teams again that are not integrated
paypal apis have improved a lot since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4485627 but these occurrences takes paypal back again. looks like there are multiple developer teams again that are not integrated
paypal apis have improved a lot since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4485627 but these occurrences takes paypal back again. looks like there are multiple developer teams again that are not integrated
Yep. I have two services using the API, both only really used by my friends. One is a cost splitting web app and the other was to send money to your friends only through SMS.
"Drivers, dog walkers, handymen" are mentioned but author doesnt include an actual example - those were all examples supplied by Venmo itself...3 years ago. Who are the developers hes talking about when he says "community that stuck with Venmo"?
And finally, unlike Twitter, which has an plethora number of ways to be consumed, searched and experienced that would be better as different apps - Venmo does not. Its just a P2P payment system.
The way I see it, Venmo has accomplished the following -
1. Deprecated old features (save resources, reduce complexity)
2. Found new way of building profitable and sustainable relationships w other businesses, rather than just a wild west API.
Terrible read, file this under- "How TO Run a Platform"