Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are | Hacker News Reader

Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

nytimes.com

159 pointsgk1377 comments

Young millennial male, every single person I know uses Venmo. IMO this article largely misses the point of the app. It's replaced cash/checks is all, it's not some huge social upheaval in the way we use money that needs to be analyzed. In my experience it's rarely used for splitting bills for dinner or picking up bar tabs (I can't remember the last time I went somewhere that wasn't able to split the bill on their end?), but more around casual "I'm going to go to the store, you need something?" "Yeah, get me some ice cream. I'll venmo you.". Or for utility payments among roommates.

The guy who was nagging you to give him $3 cash for the cab ride is now requesting $3 from you on venmo for the uber, but it's the same guy, and he still needs to chill out and remember you split your case of beer with him last week.

For our generation, this pettiness goes the other way, too. I will literally try to buy lunch/coffee/dinner for someone, and after I've gone home, they've sent an unsolicited 'repayment' to me by Venmo. And on the other hand, it's difficult to "split your case of beer" with someone -- people are afraid to partake because they're worried you'll bill them afterwards, and they can't afford the $3 in this month's budget.

Wow, this sounds horrible. The day my friends think I'll bill them for splitting a case of beer is the day I've failed as a friend.

Sigh. This reminds me of an ex-roommate.

So I worked at a factory and he was a notary or some such function connected with real estate, working from home. One day I was running late for work, which was maybe fifteen minutes away by bicycle, and asked if he didn't mind giving me a lift. About halfway there he mentioned casually, "Oh, just so you know, I'll be billing you at my normal rate ($60/hr) for this ride." Thanks for the trouble, just pull over and I'll walk, buddy.

People may or may not have sane ideas about friendship and money.

That's a weird comment on his part, but I think there is often a large mismatch between the cost that a carless person assigns to "bumming a ride" and the cost that the car owner assigns to that. If you are not a car owner, you may not realize how much of a pain in the ass it is to stop whatever you are doing and play taxi.

The solution seems simple:

"I can't, I'm busy right now."

That's what people say when someone asks them to do something they don't want to, or where the cost outweighs the benefit.

He believed that money was God's way of showing favor, and somehow that worked out to, "Anything I do to get money is okay." He ended up appropriating most of my possessions. This was of course the first and last time I asked for a lift from that guy, so if you like you can consider him to have appropriately valued his time and effort. However, not mentioning that until we were in the car and driving was frankly extortionate. As I recall, he did back down on the charge rather than pull over, but it provided an extremely sharp life lesson.

Yeah, the two choices are either provide a free ride or don't provide one at all. Billing people for rides is bizarre behavior.

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly how I feel.

If someone grabs a tab and sends me a Venmo bill, I'll happily send them their money. I would have rather grabbed the tab the next time. I won't be doing both.

(And vis a versa - If I say "I've got the tab" and the person sent me money, I'd be much less likely to invite them out in the future. I'd rather they just invited me out and grabbed a round.)

I'm not sure this is anything new though. Even before Venmo, I've always had friends who were overly concerned with keeping things "even" between us and friends who were very loose with money and wouldn't mind spotting me $20 with no immediate expectation of repayment. It's one of those social things that really depends on the history, social norms, income...etc of those involved. I try to just go with whatever makes people comfortable without thinking about it too much. And for friends I already have a set of expectations.

Also, beer example was just meant to highlight that friend we all have who practices "selective accounting" with our informal running tab. If I had any suspicion that $3 is make or break to someone I would gladly pay them what's owed and forget about the beer. Beer (and all vices really) have their own set of norms.

IMO, politeness should also take account norms that make the other party feel the most comfortable (within reason of course).

It took me a long time to learn that when your friend's dad tells you 'Please just call me John', continuing to address him as 'Mr. Smith' is less polite, not more. Same thing with money.

>Young millennial male, every single person I know uses Venmo.

Young millennial male, I'd never heard of this thing until now. These things tend to be emblematic of poor local banking infrastructure. This reminds me a lot of echocash[1].

[1] https://www.econet.co.zw/ecocash/

I believe Venmo is US-only. Determining whether the US has poor local banking infra is left as an exercise to the reader. ;)

It does. (European, lived 8 years in the US in 2 installments of 4 years each).

In what way? Is small, easy P2P payments a solved problem in Europe?

Bank transfer. No fees, fast enough (at least inside a country next business day, I think internationally it's allowed to be a bit slower?), if you want to do it mobile there are enough banks that have apps.

I can do bank transfers from my bank, but I feel awkward saying, "hey, can I get your routing and account number?" Even if I didn't feel awkward, with Venmo and Square Cash, I have all the information I need if either we're FB friends or have their email address.

Not an issue here (at least not in my circles, I couldn't even name any app like Venmo that's available here. Maybe Paypal has features like that by now, I see advertisements from them occasionally, but it never has come up, so I guess figuring out what apps the others use would be more hassle)

>Even if I didn't feel awkward, with Venmo and Square Cash, I have all the information I need if either we're FB friends or have their email address.

Unless you want to send money to someone who isn't using those services.

For sure. But almost everyone I know has one or the other, if not both. That kennitala system sounds really cool, especially if people are conditioned to pass around their account number.

I just found that when I would try to send electronic checks here, people got weird about handing over their routing and account numbers. Sometimes I would even say, "You know, the numbers that are on every check you've ever issued." Didn't matter, there was still some weirdness about it.

That's definitely part of why I like Venmo and Square Cash. It's much closer to a unilateral transaction.

>That kennitala system sounds really cool, especially if people are conditioned to pass around their account number.

>I just found that when I would try to send electronic checks here, people got weird about handing over their routing and account numbers.

I think that uncertainty is definitely part of the problem. The criticality of keeping an SSN secret whilst paradoxically sometimes having to have it on hand to give to specific authorized people seems like a recipe for paranoia.

The honest truth is I don't know if US bank account numbers need to be kept secret. I would hope not, but I also wouldn't be that surprised if someone told me they did. I can understand people taking a defensive stance, but the fact that there is space for services like Venmo to exist is a direct sign that US banks are dropping the ball. Sending money between eachother more easily than using cash is practically the reason banks were invented (although certainly not the reason they are so big right now[1]).

That wouldn't bother me so much, except we've already been down this path. Paypal has rubbed it's name into the dirt by using it's position as an unregulated psudobank to "hold funds for investigation" and gather the interest, or to unilaterally close accounts and thus implicitly seize the funds within.

The idea of a vendor-locked payment system taking root really sits ill with me. It could cause major problems with paying rent or receiving wages for people who don't, won't or can't use compatible smartphones.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-09ap6zIB6I

I don't know if US bank account numbers need to be kept secret.

Yeah, they kind of should be since the number is basically all that someone needs in order to print cheques that take money out of a given account. The US has a "pull" system instead of the more secure "push" system in Europe where giving out a bank account number is totally normal (and was back in the day before electronic banking too).

The EU now has a pull system too, thanks to SEPA Direct Debits. The receiver only has to send an XML file to the bank claiming that the client signed a mandate authorizing them. The client does have 13 months to make a claim and get the money back, but it means that one has to carefully read the statements, rather than trust that every transaction was initiated by us.

Well it's not more awkward that the initial "can I have your phone number" or "can I add you on Facebook". You only do it once when you need it and never again.

Also, there's plenty of alternatives, bank transfers are usually the last resort. There's Revolut, Monzo, Ping It...

(UK perspective)

hey, can I get your routing and account number?

Why? That's what they are for.

A bank transfer happens pretty much instantly when I do it (First Direct, UK).

It can occasionally take up to an hour, but it's rare.

Yes. Iceland has a system called the kennitala. It's kind of like a social security number, except not secret.

If you give me your kennitala and your bank account number (10 digits), I can send you any amount of money, no lower limit (there might be an upper one, I haven't tried buying a house GIRO) without paying a fee, regardless of which bank you're with.

When I sign a rental agreement with my landlord, I give him my kennitala and no other details. He sets up a recurring payment request linked to my kennitala. Every month, the bill shows up in my account with a request to pay it, but it's not like a credit card charge, it's merely a request for payment, kind of like the inverse of me inputting my landlords bank details and kennitala myself. I can ignore it if I want to.

Because the kennitala is independent from the bank, I can change banks and my landlords rental bill, along with all my utilities bills, will automatically start showing up on my new account without anyone doing anything.

Canada has Interac e-transfers, which you send to an email or phone number and the user redeems them with their bank. It's a little more friction than tapping a button (you have to set up a pass code for redemption) but it's included with most chequing accounts.

Most banks charge a $1 fee though.

Most UK bank account allow you to pay using a person's phone number instead of account and sort number. Work across (all?) banks and payments are usually instant directly into the account.

Yeah it's called PayM

I've never heard of it except as an obscure Paypal competitor. And, it turns out it's essentially the same service as Paypal and is even owned by Paypal, since 2014.

I agree that services like this only serve to fill gaps in antiquated banking systems. From what I understand, in Australia, for instance, people can send money easily for free between bank accounts and do so routinely without 3rd party services - including paying at stores. Circa 2009, a friend from Adelaide rolled eyes that we still used paper checks in the US. We still do.

I remember checks from the 80s, my mum/dad used to have them. I never owned a check book.

Good for you? Maybe try one sometime: as it turns out, old things are not de facto bad.

if you enjoy keeping a running tally of how much is in your account, and love knowing that what you see when you check your balance at the bank is never up-to-date, checks are great!

man i quit doing that as soon as i could check my balance on the internet and just use a credit/debit card, just make sure you turn off 'overdraft protection' before doing this or you can dig a very deep hole of compound interest.

- signed, an early gen-xer

I use paper checks quite often. A lot of places still don’t take credit cards. Honestly, you don’t need to be a math major or accountant to keep track of how much money you have.

I agree, plus a lot of the best hole in the wall restaurants don't take credit cards.

As a non-American, it surprises me greatly that a restaurant that doesn't take credit cards would happily accept a cheque of all things.

Cards still don't mean your balance is up to date though - did your credit card payment get taken yet, are there any pending transactions? Okay, that's the balance, but what bills are still due to be taken by direct debit, and are there any standing orders?

Using a card isn't some magic solution for someone struggling to manage their personal finances.

Why would old things be bad anyway? That's an IT pop culture myth.

Yes, we're not disagreeing.

I'm a 20-something Australian who is possibly the only 20-something Australian I know who at one point had a chequebook.

The only time I've found cheques useful outside of paying for my rental bond (for which you need a bank cheque anyway) is when I've had to pay for something by posting in a form, and I don't feel like writing down all my credit card details on paper and having them stored rather insecurely.

The only other relatively common uses of cheques I hear of here are using bank cheques to exchange money when privately selling a car. Other than that, cheques are dead. As they should be.

Checks allow float to be used to my advantage.

Would you not consider PayPal one of these things? Definitely Square Cash.

What's an example of local banking infrastructure that helps alleviate the problem of needing to pay people money with ease? I'm not even sure how it works on my Huntington mobile app. I know I could do it fairly painlessly with Simple bank. Except it's really only easy if they're a Simple user I think. Otherwise I'll need to get their physical address which will mail them an actual check, or ask for their routing/checking.

Chase Pay makes it pretty easy I think? But really people who sign up just to use that and attach a non-Chase account are doing the same thing as Square Cash, Paypal, Venmo, etc.

edit: huh, interesting. On a Simple bank FAQ page about paying third parties, it also links some additional services:

https://www.simple.com/help/articles/payments-and-transfers/...

Here are a few common and useful services:

* Google Wallet - https://www.google.com/wallet With Google Wallet, you can send money to anyone in the U.S. with their email address or phone number. You can link your Simple account with your card number or your account and routing numbers.

* PayPal - https://paypal.com PayPal offers a wide variety of services. If you’re planning to use PayPal with your Simple account, here’s what you need to know: We cannot link to Paypal accounts under a business name, since your Simple account is for personal use. Some PayPal services may incur a fee. One thing to keep in mind when linking your Simple account to Paypal is that when you're asked for the bank name, you'll need to enter the name of our partner bank, BBVA Compass, rather than Simple.

* Square Cash - https://cash.me Square Cash allows you to send money for free with your debit card. You don't need a username or a passphrase—just the email address for the person you'd like to pay and your debit card number. Transfers are often instant, but they can take up to 1-2 business days.

* Venmo - https://venmo.com With Venmo, you can send money to friends and even authorize other people to withdraw funds from your Venmo balance. Venmo can be hooked up to Simple with your card number (make sure it's marked as debit, not credit), your bank account number, or both.

* Xoom - https://www.xoom.com Xoom primarily used to send money internationally. They do charge fees, which is typical for this type of service.

In Canada, we have a debit card network called Interac and can use it to send an "e-Transfer" to anyone else with a Canadian bank account using nothing more than their email address or phone number + a shared secret to claim the payment. Some number of free e-Transfers per month is typically included with bank accounts.

Interac solved the P2P payments problem for every social group that I'm in there.

Interac e-Transfers took 10+ min and cost me $1.50 every time I've used them. They're absolute garbage compared to Venmo.

I actually use Venmo in Canada with friends that have US bank accounts because it's still more convenient even having to calculate the exchange rate.

Distinctly non-millennial, creaky, grumpy middle aged fart here: venmo (and Google wallet) are great. Paying the babysitter? 10 seconds to find out their venmo username. Check that the picture looks right, send. Much easier than the alternative US bank-based solutions such as popmoney. Much less hassle than keeping cash around.

Maybe it's a regional thing? Almost no-one here uses Venmo. I mentioned it around my friends the other day and they'd never even heard of it. 2-3 people at my office use it semi-regularly but that's how they are--trying out almost any new app for anything. For all I know they've dropped it and are on to something else now.

If I tried to pay anyone with it I can guarantee they'd say (a more polite version of) "WTF is that? No. Do you have money? Try money."

Where are you?

It's really mostly a US problem, because of how hard wire transfers are to do here, compared to most other countries. All these services are basically wire transfers done right.

And in some other countries the banks aren't incompetent and have simply implemented the same thing themselves. Sweden has free wire transfers that take half a business day but despite this the banks still got together and implemented a free, instant, payment-via-phone-number app https://medium.com/@etiennebr/swish-the-secret-swedish-finte...

In my experience, many restaurants have a limit on how many ways they can split the bill, usually 2-4, so for larger groups venmo is an easy way to solve the issue. And there certainly are some restaurants that don't split at all (seems to be a regional thing).

Restaurants have a limit on how many ways they will split the bill.

I used to wait tables and it's annoying to split many ways, but every POS system I ever used allowed splitting many ways. I never tested for an upper limit, but I soul routinely split to mid-teens of separate checks.

I get that part of the reason is credit card merchant fees -- someone is paying for my 2x dining-out credit card points, after all. But part of the reason also is wait staff time... time spent running six separate cards is time not spent getting drinks or food.

Maybe I'm just a tech-city millennial who hates interacting with people, but I've always kinda wondered why there isn't any POS system that prints out a QR or text code you can punch into your smartphone to pull up a digital receipt that you can claim what items were yours, auto-tally tax and tip, and just pay for it digitally or yes, even venmo-invoice everyone in the group.

Yes, I realize this is exactly the behavior the article was talking about it, but honestly, that article was a little "get off my lawn"-ish. If it's a beer, sure, I'll get a round, but if it's a 6-person birthday party where some people get the $12 salad because they're making teacher salary and the tech-bro's get the $36 steak but you all still want to be friends without the awkwardness different financial or socioeconomic situations getting in the way, then yes, everyone paying whatever they ordered makes sense.

Technology enables new behaviors and new norms, honestly.

If it means the guy or girl who gets 2x points on restaurant bills and making tech money fronts the bill and venmos what everyone ordered later, so be it. I would ask why isn't that even easier yet with my self-invoice-via-digital-bill-and-save-the-server-from-running-6-separate-cards app?

Red Robin has little tablets at the table you can use to select your items and pay your portion of the bill (among other things, like signal a waiter or play silly games). I thought it was clever.

That said, the situation where someone ordered a $12 entree while someone else ordered a $36 one was solved when everyone paid in cash -- you just throw in your portion. It was only when everyone was trying to pay by card that this became an issue (which Venmo and ilk addressed).

People claiming that paying different amounts is some kind of "modern" problem are just ignorant of history -- everyone paying by card and splitting a bill being difficult is the modern problem.

I get airline points for putting charges on my credit card. 2x for restaurants. So at meetups, I drop the 300-400$ bill on the card, get Venmos from everyone, cash is dropped directly into my bank account with no skimming. Boom, free points.

>"In my experience, many restaurants have a limit on how many ways they can split the bill,"

That limit is artificially imposed though isn't? I also think this is mostly an American thing because its perceived as a "hassle" which is ironic because they're being tipped for their "service" in the US.

In Sweden I noticed for instance instance you can get a meal with a group of 10 people and at the end of the meal the server will walk around with card machine and run the individual cards at the table. It's not seen as a hassle at all just part of the job.

I only experienced this resistance to splitting bills in New York. Where I live now, largish city in the South, they'll gladly split the bill any which way you want. Same with Midwest cities - no issues splitting.

Indeed I was mostly thinking NYC there but its the same in LA too.

A lot of restaurants are won't split bills too many ways because it takes time and impacts table turnover. When you have a line out the door, turnover matters.

Back in Slovenia bill splitting doesn't exist. To me it's a completely American thing. The best they can do in Slovenia is charge everyone individually for their items, but that's not really bill splitting.

>"A lot of restaurants are won't split bills too many ways because it takes time and impacts table turnover."

How much time time does it really take? Let's compare it to a single check with with cash as the form of payment. Some diner at the table needs to go through the bill and and collect the money or else the bill gets passed around and then everyone antes up their portion, there always come confusion about what something on the check is or who had what. Then you need to collect all the cash and make change for everyone. Then the server needs to settle the check at the register.

Is that really any lengthier than just splitting up the check for individual diners? I am doubting it.

Yeah people don't do that. The way splitting works in the US is that you split evenly.

So 1 person pays then says "Everyone venmo me $X" and the party leaves.

I'm quite familiar with the way it works in the US. If it's a birthday dinner or your circle of friends then yes people will likely split it evenly, but if you are a mixed group of people then people will generally pay for what they had. But regardless if its just "60 bucks a head" everyone at the table needs to settle up, and everyone throws in cash in a pile and takes their change out of the pile and then the pile needs to be sorted and counted and sometimes its short etc.

Only assholes ask for this. It's definitely not the norm. This is the fastest way to encorage me never to eat with you.

>Then the server needs to settle the check at the register.

This is where the time becomes an issue. Running each card can take awhile, and when you add up 4-5 cards, you get a real impact on time that the server can't be taking care of anything else. In a job that doesn't have a lot of downtime, 5-6 minutes tied to a computer can be detrimental.

Nobody splits with cash, though.

That’s the restaurants excuse but it doesn’t hold up. The couple of minutes spent doing it when places support it is usually replaced with several times longer of diners working out how to handle it amongst each other at the table

Restaurants in China don't split bills. It's a foreign concept.

You'll often find people at a table fight each other to pay for the entire bill.

That is literally what bill splitting is

I think it's more that credit cards charge the restaurant a flat fee per bill ($0.30ish?) So that eats into their profits at some point.

Same in Canada. Sometimes you have to tell them in advance so they keep track of each person's orders separately instead of assigning all purchases to the table. I haven't seen a restaurant that outright wouldn't do split bills.

Really? I've seen a bill be split 30 different ways at multiple places. It must be a huge hassle, but I think it's possible.

I was eating out (in the UK) with a large group earlier today and we split the bill between 13 happily. Didn't take too long with contactless cards either.

I think it depends on how convoluted your splitting is. To make things easy, my friends and I tell a waitress individual checks up front, then the couples will tell the server "pay these with this card." That is much easier than saying "these 3 on this bill, these two on one, these two on antoher, and three individuals."

In Australia it's not uncommon to see restaurants with "Sorry - No Split Bills" signs up at the cash register.

It's also not that uncommon to see the staff let you split the bill anyway on a case-by-case basis...

"every single person I know uses Venmo"

How does that happen. I don't know a single person who uses Venmo. Not one. I know a lot of people and I work in Tech.

Venmo is, effectively, a social network; it's going to get popular along social lines. Depending on whether it's caught on among your immediate friends and acquaintances, you'd expect to either know a lot of people using Venmo or very few.

In India a lot of people use Splitwise. I am on it and my bill splitting, and personal borrowing/leding records are handled by the app. Though it doesn't handle actual money transfers yet; they have no such integrations.

Is Venmo similar?

https://www.splitwise.com

They've recently added support for settling via Paytm (which is the most popular mobile wallet in India) and I believe they also support Paypal.

I love Splitwise; almost all of my friends at uni use it and pretty much all shared expenses go on it. I also use Walnut (http://www.getwalnut.com/), not for the settlement feature, but rather for the expense tracking which automatically reads SMSes and builds up monthly expense reports.

Who is they in your first paragraph? Venmo? Or Splitwise? Venmo supporting PayPal makes complete sense considering it is a subsidiary of a subsidiary of PayPal.

If it's Splitwise, then it seems like PayPal doesn't care so much for propping up Venmo. Interesting either way.

Walnut seems like an interesting product. Thanks for the link.

Sorry for the ambiguity, it's Splitwise.

Think twice about using Walnut. Their business model is selling your financial details to the highest bidder. They claim it's as innocuous as wealthy users being contacted about investment opportunities, but I wouldn't take their word for it.

Far better to use a vanilla expense manager. Maybe it takes an extra second to enter the details of the transaction but at least your data never leaves your device. That's the way it should be.

Not really. In the US, Splitwise has a "settle up" button that lets your record a cash payment or use Venmo or Paypal to send the correct amount owed to the other person. Splitwise keeps track of who owes who. Venmo lets you pay them.

charismatic early adopter is among the peer group would be my guess.

I'm 19 and most people I know use Venmo. I'm curious - around what age are your friends? My parents don't know what Venmo is, and I don't think many of their friends (most in the age range of 40-60) do either.

> I'm 19 and most people I know use Venmo. I'm curious - around what age are your friends? My parents don't know what Venmo is, and I don't think many of their friends (most in the age range of 40-60) do either.

Made in 1987 here. I have Paypal as well but I prefer Google Wallet. Google Wallet is directly connected to my bank account. I don't trust Paypal to connect it to my bank account. Why would you trust Venmo with your bank account I would never know. Am I... am I too old and too conservative?

I have a separate bank account for Venmo that I keep capped at a few hundred dollars. Getting robbed a few hundred is much better than a few thousand, and for the convenience of Venmo (especially on a college campus) it's a fine risk for me.

Serious question: We all know PayPal has a penchant for freezing/seizing PayPal balances, but is there actually a single known case of them actually initiating an unwanted bank account transfer without the user initiating it (or someone otherwise losing money via Venmo)? Is this fear even rational?

I can understand not wanting to support the company as a matter of principle, but I'm not sure I buy the risk angle.

Venmo was bought by Braintree which was bought by PayPal so venmo is basically PayPal now anyway. Everyone I know also uses venmo (Bay Area tech employees in their twenties).

I prefer square cash, but this entire app ecosystem only exists because American banks don't allow free wires for some reason.

The only people I know who use google wallet are google employees.

As far as trust there's pretty limited risk, lots of protection/laws around bank access and easy to audit.

> I prefer square cash, but this entire app ecosystem only exists because American banks don't allow free wires for some reason.

Ah - I kept wondering what the main hook for these services was, appreciate efficiency and social effects are the USP, but wondered what the main reason was over and above just a direct transfer from your mobile banking app (how most people I know here in the UK do this).

Lots of banks here (US) offer a p2p transfer services of some sort, but often, it's not as simple to use. For example, through Ally bank, I can send money to someone using PopMoney--

* If I know their bank routing number and account number, I can just send them money directly without any involvement on their end.

    * Most people will not just give out their account info, even though it's on every check they write.

* I can use email or mobile phone to send a payment, but then the person on the other end has to deal with entering the same info into popmoney to accept the transaction. At that point, they have to trust popmoney.

None of this would be a problem except that each bank uses a different system. Chase uses ChasePay. Ally and PNC use PopMoney. There are several others. This causes a lot of friction when sending money. "Oh, you use chase pay? Now I have to set up an account there, too."

Venmo (and others) let you abstract away the bank details. Everyone in your friend group signs up for 1 account (and it could be a competing service. I like Sqaure Cash) and is ready to send. They also offer better account lookup and the ability to send a payment request.

Most US banks I've dealt with (Wells Fargo, BoA, Simple) allow transfer for free to other members of the same bank, but wiring to another bank can be upwards of $30 (if you can do it at all).

They also often require using a clunky web UI without an ability to do it from a mobile app.

I can actually relate quite a bit to this. I waited somewhere between 1 and 2 years before setting up Venmo just because I didn't want to hook it up to my bank account. Only after seeing all of my friends using it did I finally set up a Venmo account.

If you don't trust Paypal, I can understand why you don't trust Venmo.

From the footer of https://venmo.com/

Venmo is a service of PayPal, Inc., a licensed provider of money transfer services (NMLS ID: 910457). All money transmission is provided by PayPal, Inc. pursuant to PayPal, Inc.’s licenses. © 2017 PayPal, Inc.

Born in late 70's here, and I've been using Google Wallet like this as well. I used PayPal for things like eBay back in the day before it became such a cluster, and I still occasionally use it when some ticketing system requires it.

But for the past several years I've just defaulted to Wallet ever since they added the ability to attach money to an email like you're attaching a file. I know it's just UI but that was sort of brilliant (if done in the typical fuss-less Google fashion so most don't even notice it).

So while I still lean toward buying rounds or taking turns paying for things with friends I see often, occasionally I'll be out someplace and unexpectedly need cash without a nearby ATM. If a friend has cash, I can just send them funds to pay back. Same goes the other way around.

Other times it's something like ordering tickets to an event and I just buy for myself and a few friends at the same time. Then if they end up going, they can forward me funds at their leisure and no messing with ATMs or writing checks.

Sounds like Venmo is used in a similar way but I've not started using it if only because I already have something I'm satisfied with and the handful of people who even want to use such a thing have it as well. I tend not to proselytize to other people who don't express an interest in doing things this way, but I've yet to run into anyone who is using Venmo.

Although maybe half a year ago I was single for the first time in years and saw a lot of people mostly-jokingly (I hope) on Tinder asking people to Venmo them $5 to get their attention. Seemed like either a cynical/ironic "why not?" sort of joke or the least ambitious prostitutes in history.

Around 40 here and I’ve never heard of Venmo. I don’t know if any of my social circle use it but nobody’s mentioned it.

My uncle (mid 40s) who I got into Venmo has never heard of it in his social circle either. Connecting his contacts showed two people he knew around his age using it pretty actively. Besides that though, his activity feed is barren compared to mine (late 20s).

I'm 20 and I've never heard of Venmo outside of HN. To be fair, I am also in Australia, so it's more likely that it just hasn't caught on. The major bank here (CommBank) has made paying other people frictionless (you can send money to a phone number, via NFC, cardless cash, or just by regular transfer) so it's likely that Venmo wouldn't have much of a market here.

Yeah, Venmo is US only at the moment

It's really good for situations where you have large groups of people that all need to informally pay a small amount of money. If you've ever organized an event like this (like say...a college party), you know how annoying it is to chase down crumpled $1 bills from people. Venmo handily solves the problem so I'm sure that's why it caught on among this demo so quickly.

I only know 1, I also work in tech.

I, have found developers and other tech workers to be, somewhat ironically, more "Ludditic" than the general population.

I think it's because we've seen behind the curtain. Product X isn't as magical, and we've seen how it can go horribly wrong.

I wonder if mechanical engineers tend to be safer drivers...

I think it's a u-curve. Either you are hypervigilant about your personal information and security, or you relax and accept the inevitable.

I have one data point in the form of my father, who is a mechanical engineer. He always knew what you absolutely shouldn't do with your car, like give it gas on turns(wears cv joints in fwd vehicles) or keep the clutch depressed when you're standing still(wears some bearings I don't remember the name of).

He has had the same car for the past 25 years now.

" keep the clutch depressed when you're standing still(wears some bearings I don't remember the name of)."

throwout bearing

>keep the clutch depressed when you're standing still(wears some bearings I don't remember the name of).

It's the throwout bearing. Your father has a point, but I would rather keep the clutch in. Too much thinking involved putting it in neutral every time you stop.

Not putting it in neutral when stopped can contribute to failing your driving test in the U.K.

Aside from reducing wear on the throwout bearing, what is the purpose?

Not having the car jerk forward if your foot slips off the clutch.

Which it may well do if you get rear-ended. One 'accident' can become two.

Technically you're supposed to hold on brakes or a hand brake while idle, which makes both points moot. Especially important in clutchless cars or other auto transmissions.

The brakes will hold a slipped clutch and a rear end.

The clutch has an added benefit of you get rear ended and drop it - engine braking is a thing. Not good for the engine, potentially good for your forward bumper when you get reared.

> The clutch has an added benefit of you get rear ended and drop it - engine braking is a thing.

There's no engine breaking when stopped, if the engine is running.

I typically do keep my foot on the brake when stopped in traffic. And I do balance brakes, clutch and throttle when stopped on a hill. But except for stop-and-go traffic, or when getting ready to punch it, using the clutch and brakes together seems pointless.

Safety. If clutch could fail mechanically while your foot was on it and the consequence of the failure would be the same as your foot slipping off, then it is safer to shift to neutral. I was taught this when I owned a 1980 VW Scirocco and my informant owned a 1980 Rabbit (Golf).

Interesting. In Australia you're required to keep it in 1st with the clutch in while at red lights.

For the P plate tests maybe, but that'd depend on the state too.

The way you phrased it makes me think of cops at lights just going around and aggressively throwing gear sticks into 1st.

I was responding to a post which said:

> Not putting it in neutral when stopped can contribute to failing your driving test in the U.K.

So the context was specifically driving tests.

If you need to think for thar, you're not driving enough :)

>If you need to think for thar, you're not driving enough :)

Aside from reducing the wear on the throwout bearing, what purpose is served by putting the car in neutral every time it is stopped in traffic?

It lets you take your foot off the clutch ;)

In all seriousness, that's why I did it. My first stick was a truck, and even though it was small, it has a stiff clutch. You got tired of standing on it.

> It lets you take your foot off the clutch ;)

If that's what you like, go for it, but two posts seemed to imply that I'm doing something wrong by keeping the vehicle in gear with the clutch in while stopped in traffic, and I'd really like to know what that is. One post implied that UK law encourages or even requires that the vehicle be taken out of gear when it's stopped in traffic. I've never heard anything like that in the US.

I've never encountered a clutch that took any noticeable effort for me to operate. And, considering all of the other bearings in a vehicle that are rotating under load constantly, I question the value of trying to save the throwout bearing a few extra seconds on each stop.

So I would really like to know why I should shift to neutral when stopped in traffic. Should I do it when I'm waiting for a break in the traffic in the oncoming lane so I can turn across it? (A left turn in the US.) When I'm stopping at a stop sign, and then immediately going because there is no other traffic around? When I'm stopped for a few seconds in a stop-and-go traffic jam?

As a UK driver, I was taught to shift to neutral and apply the parking brake when stopped for long enough to do so.

The reasoning given by my driving instructor was that this secures the vehicle and makes things just a little more safe for everyone.

If I am stopped in traffic with my parking brake on and sometime lightly rear-ends me, my vehicle may not move at all. If my parking brake were not applied, the probability of my vehicle not moving at all drops significantly.

If I am rear-ended without the parking brake applied such that my vehicle rear-ends someone in-front of me, I am partially responsible for the damage caused ahead due to my failure to secure my vehicle.

This is only tangentially related to taking my foot of the clutch. I depress the clutch in order to apply the parking brake correctly. Once the parking brake is applied, I simply have no need to continue to depress the clutch.

It takes me very little time to apply the parking brake and then release it and so I tend to do so when stopping for more than a second or two.

And many newer cars will stop the engine if you stop the car with the clutch up. And also can activate the parking break at the same time.

Many newer cars don't have a manual clutch anymore, so the brake is the only reasonable way. Idle only will typically coast in those. Parking gear/brake will work but is annoying to use - and it is better to use the foot brake anyway most of the time.

> like give it gas on turns(wears cv joints in fwd vehicles)

I'd rather replace my CV joints every 10 years than be that jerk who slows down to a crawl on every turn on a mountain road.

Depends on the app. Venmo depends on being social and going out a lot with friends, a lot of nerds are introverted.

I know zero. In fact, before I saw this post I didn't even know what it was.

Now, I'm pretty sure this is because I don't live in the US. Is this a purely US-specific service, or is it available (and used) anywhere else.

If not, are there similar services in other countries? I believe Wepay in China is something similar, but I don't know much about that one either.

It is slightly embarassing (or not) but I started uses WhatsApp (or any IM app) somewhere in early-mid 2016. And the final request came from my sister back in the village. She complained she couldn't add me on WhatsApp.

When I joined everyone was there and I was promptly added to tens of groups which I promptly left one by one.

I have been an Android developer for 6 years now.

Which groups did you get added to? I too was surprised getting added to multiple groups. I've silenced some. Left some. But stay in all the family ones. Did you leave family ones too?

Are you an old?

I didn't use it until I shared an apartment with some friends who were ~15 years younger than me. Every single one of their cohorts used it, all the time.

I've never even heard of Venmo before today, so maybe I'm just getting old ..

Most everyone in my office uses it. Makes picking up lunch for the group so much easier.

The only time I hear about it is when people on HN say everyone uses it.

The girls on tinder jokingly ask for it in their profiles.

Why downvoted? I have seen many Tinder profiles with "Send me/Venmo me $5 and see what happens". Scammy but true.

I don't think any of my friends use snapchat...and yet...

I've heard there's a West Coast/East Coast divide when it comes to Venmo with it being much more popular on the east coast.

It's really big at my large (10k - 30k) state university in California.

I've noticed it has entered the vocabulary of students at the university I'm at in Mississippi (where new trends seem to arrive later), so I assumed it was fairly popular across the country at this point.

How's college in Mississippi? I'm thinking not many HNers are in that state.

You old? (=

I am.

My neighbor's kid introduced me to it. Now I can't live without it. Being able to pay my maid or gardener when I'm not home... priceless. I never carry cash or a wallet any more. Slip an ID card in my phone case... good to go.

Be careful, they technically don't allow commercial transactions and will freeze your account (and reverse transactions) if they catch you. I got a stern warning after selling something on Craigslist and accepting payment via venmo, they must have figured it out by the note and lack of network of friends with the buyer.

That's a bad idea because you're likely to get scammed: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2015/09/venm...

Basically if you're doing a transaction with an untrusted person the time it takes for things to clear means you can be taken advantage of.

It is not about scams, but lost earnings from PayPal services which are expensive for a wire transfer.

Venmo has a similar dispute system and you can often bounce on credit card too.

I've heard getting scammed by people you don't know (I guess people you know too) is really easy on Venmo. Especially in cases like CL. Be careful.

Just another data point, everyone in my group of friends and even friends of friends uses Venmo. We're in our early 30s, many in tech and live in California.

I know lots of people who use venmo, in tech. (LA)

Likewise in the UK. We have Faster Payments and a heavily consolidated banking system here, turning banking apps into a de facto P2P payments platform.

Serious question: how old are you?

I’m 37 and probably wouldn’t know anyone using it in my normal social circle except I happen to know a bunch of ~24 yr olds (some younger) via a younger colleague.

Of those you are younger guess how many use Venmo? Every. Single. One.

Not every day, or all the time, but regularly: especially with friends & at weekends. It’s spread so we’ll split lunches at work occasionally with it.

Hell, there are several restaurants in Berkeley that allow you to pay with it because college kids use it so much.

I'm a 35 year founder of a small company in San Francisco. I had never heard of Venmo until recently. The dividing line among my team is around 30 years old. Below 30 -> use Venmo all the time. Above 30 -> never heard of it.

Sounds about right.

I much prefer it for payments amongst friends than anything else now though. It’s rather good.

I would love to know if the college crowd was a specific target for venmo: it’s nailed it

This divide isn't really an age thing IMHO, its an attitude about money (related to age) thing. In my early-mid 20s most of my friends were just starting out and counting every dollar. Taking the hit for an entire round of drinks or the pizza delivery was painful enough that you asked for everyone to chip in or at the very least had a careful mental accounting of whose turn it was to buy next (and if they somehow weaseled out if it, that was a strain on the friendship- and I am sure most have cut some moochers out of their life).

This may vary by your group and where they at in life, but by my late 20s, those things mattered a lot less. If I buy someone a beer, I just hope they will get me back at some point and if not, then I bought them a beer- no big deal-enjoy! (well enjoy, unless this is the fifth time in a row I have done this and you haven't gotten me back).

I am in my mid-late 30s, and I have Venmo. I just tend to not use it very often, only for fairly big ticket items- concert/event tickets, someone buys a gift for someone else that we all chip in on, a restaurant gives a hard time about taking multiple credit cards, etc.

I have not yet seen businesses accepting it as a form of payment, but that's really interesting and implies it's going the way of WeChat payments.

I’m not technically sure they’re allowed to do that via ToS - it’s the owners personal account - but it happens

I'm also in tech and never heard of it until my wife introduced me to it. Her and her friends use it regularly.

I'm 30, work in tech, and most of my friends and family (in my generation) use Venmo. Weirdly enough, I don't really use Venmo with my friends in tech (different circles).

Our use case tends to be for fantasy football, splitting vacation homes, hotels, bigger gifts for the parents, and other more expensive things. Replaces checks more than cash I'd say.

Hah. All this talk and I just realized yeah the more techy a person I know is, the less likely they use Venmo. The use cases I see are similar to your last paragraph.

I'm in tech. Never heard of it. I mentioned it to my wife, "Hey honey, have you heard of this neat app Venmo?" Her: "yeah, I use it all the time."

She viewed it like a newer paypal. She has paid friends with it, and they have paid her with it.

Hm. How old are you? I'm 27 and everyone I know uses Venmo. I'm not even in the valley or the bay.

Maybe he works at Venmo.

Have you used Venmo before? Either way, if you connect your contacts (not sure if it's just FB or overall contacts too), I have a hard time believing you won't see at least one semi-active person you know using it. To be sure, not saying you should connect your contact info to Venmo. It is a privacy matter after all.

Even my dad who has virtually no real friends outside the husbands of my mom's friends, had multiple contacts using Venmo when I got him to use the app so we would have an easier time paying for stuff between us.

I don't know a lot of people, but my Venmo activity feed of friends has at least a dozen transactions a week. I have ~300 FB friends and about half that in Venmo "friends".

Most people in my graduating class use Square Cash. The next oldest class, which graduated this year, mostly uses Venmo. Very much a social network effect

Same here. I only know about Venmo because the people who stole my credit card number used it to pay themselves.

I don't mind being a wet blanket and these are communications issues not payment facilitation issues.

Explain to people why it is frustrating that they don't communicate how you're going to split things before doing it and don't expect anything back when you give away half a case of beer.

Both are equal offenses in the same class.

I got my landlord onto Venmo to pay utilities. She wanted a check slipped under her door. That wasn't happening. Now she just requests the amount every month and all I have to do is tap "Pay".

Did you look into online bill pay?

I had a landlord who wanted paid by check... I was able to set up an online bill pay with my credit union that automatically mailed out a physical check each month.

I was happy because I could automate it like I did my other bills, she was happy because she didn't have to pay credit card processing fees.

As the other HNer noted below, we've had free BillPay in banks for decades now. It's also safer than Venmo.

Far other end of what often gets labelled "millenial". Hadn't heard of Venmo until this HN thread.

I do live in the UK where interbank transfer of cash is almost instant and free of charge, so the need for it is rather less, I suspect.

Yeah, the UK has so much contactless payment and cheap or free transfers that it has, somewhat ironically, limited competition in this sector.

Even things like Google Wallet & Apple Pay seem to be treated with a “but... why?” attitude.

From my experience in the UK, those apps allow you to leave your card at home. Not much of a difference if you're carrying a wallet anyway, but if you carry just a phone and a card + ID in the phone case, you can now ditch the card. Otherwise I don't see the benefit.

Had my phone's NFC fail me (especially at tube barriers) enough times to recommend perhaps not relying solely on a phone for payments.

Ha. I generally leave the phone at home and just take a card. Slimmest wallet I've ever had. I've never carried ID, though. That would double the size of my wallet :(

Surprising that this is the first mention of Apple Pay in the thread, given the upcoming release in iOS 11. I wonder how they'll resolve these issues. Will commercial transactions be technically forbidden? For how long, and for what reasons, will transactions be able to be reversed? When can we feel comfortable that the money is "really there"?

Also a millennial male, same exact thing.

As someone in their early 30s living in the Valley, I actually don’t know too many people who uses Venmo. My friends are generally not too hung up on having exact numbers, as it isn’t worth the awkwardness & gives the opportunity for someone to be generous.

Maybe I generally just know decent human beings though. Greediness/cheapness is just not a problem in my circles.

You seem to be implying that people who use Venmo and/or prefer to deal in exact numbers aren't decent human beings. I suggest you reevaluate that position and consider how greed might not be the root cause of someone behaving that way.

I'd also argue that using a Venmo doesn't take away the opportunity for someone to be generous. Venmo isn't much different from cash except that it makes it more convenient to be precise - it certainly doesn't force anyone to be precise though.

My friend groups use it for dinner etc. despite most places being able to split checks because it's easier for us to figure it out amongst ourselves than burden some waitress with splitting it (even if their software makes it easy, they still have to take four cards and run them all and return them to their proper owners and such).

It has only made splitting the check easier; i don't see it replacing cash any time soon.

How is Venmo any different from PayPal other than the social network aspect of it?

Why can't you just "Paypal it to you"?

It's because Venmo adds the voyeuristic aspect to an otherwise boring task of money transfer that PayPal had been doing just fine.

I have never disagreed with something so much.

While I'm financially not doing so bad, I grew up poor. When I was college age going out with friends was complicated- if we all handled our own bills it was one thing, but when I'm not drinking and only eating cheap food to save money splitting the check would literally mean I'm subsidizing other people friends and could be the difference between being able to afford to go out or not.

Apps like this level the playing field and make it a lot easier for people of different incomes to socialize together with less awkwardness.

You were either too proud to tell your friends the truth or had bad friends.

You haven't had many friendships with diverse income levels.

This. It's not even about whether one can afford things, but the unfairness of splitting the bill. I have an anecdote where a friend of mine had 2 glasses of juice, while her friends were drinking wine and all sorts. When her part of the bill was $4 she ended up paying $50 (currency approxm, but you get the point).

Even with similar incomes, as young adults in our mid-20's, working hard for our money, we'd like more control over what we end up paying for.

I understood mjevans as saying that they thus should have not split the bill evenly (and their friends should not insist on it), for exactly those reasons?

This problem is even worse when it's not even necessarily income levels that is the problem, but just different values around money & spending. If you have the same income level, but find it outrageous to spend x on y, you just get viewed as a "cheap ass"

It's not my fault I don't want to pay 13 dollars+tip for a cocktail when I can make 20 of them at home for the same price.

> It's not my fault I don't want to pay 13 dollars+tip for a cocktail when I can make 20 of them at home for the same price.

Oh, certainly not your fault, but you might be better staying at home. Why agree to go out somewhere with your friends if you are just going to drink water?

> Why agree to go out somewhere with your friends if you are just going to drink water?

What do you think I'm an amateur? Club soda with lime, in a highball glass.

It is your fault if you go out to bars that serve $13 drinks instead of staying home and making 20 of them.

We all have choices.

> It's not my fault I don't want to pay 13 dollars+tip for a cocktail when I can make 20 of them at home for the same price.

Then stay the hell home, please. Everybody will be happier.

When I organize something like this either A) I think the cocktails/beer/food/etc. is genuinely amazing and if you don't then you should stay home or B) I'm more interested in the company and I think the ambiance is acceptable.

Most of that drink's $13 is paying for the venue in which you consumed it. Frankly, I also dont really get why it's so much more fun to drink with friends in expensive and crowded spaces than our own spaces, but I appreciate that's a minority view.

Even if all your friends know, you will feel bad if someone -- anyone -- pays for you.

Being able to pay for yourself feels like control, and it's doubly important to have that feeling when you're poor.

Probably variable. I've said a few times that I can't afford to go out, and had friends offer to pay (to be paid back if/when I can afford it), and it never really bothered me (I was extremely grateful to have such good friends TBH).

I did make sure to pay them back when I could (a few months later), and when I had a bit more money a few years later made sure to buy them all a few rounds of drinks though.

I don't follow your logic at all. The person in this article is saying that people are being cheap by not just splitting the bill evenly. I'm pointing out that if everyone did that it would put people with less money at a huge disadvantage. The fact is my friends did not do this, and now that things like venmo exist it's even easier to manage this.

> I don't follow your logic at all. The person in this article is saying that people are being cheap by not just splitting the bill evenly.

Could be a cultural thing. I live in a small town of a rather poor country. Where I live, friends pay in turns, today I'll pay and the next time he'll pay and so forth... and not even very strict turns[1]. If could split the check in half, that's acceptable. Splitting the bill to the cent would leave you with no friends in no time.

[1]: That said, food here is cheap (dirt cheap compared to the US). If you go to the capital, it's different. I noticed that people there split the bill, but restaurants/food costs 2x or 3x up, so paying the whole thing is expensive.

> Could be a cultural thing

Also situational. When I was at university, if we went out anywhere, you'd just pay for your food/drinks individually. Now we're all in a position where money isn't as tight, buying rounds of drinks and not paying close attention to who's turn it is or the price of the drinks is much more common.

Down to the cent and quite often those that are picky are just cheap not poor.

You made that assumption about their personal situation way too quickly, based on not enough information.

I'm with you. Even without the factor of not being able to afford it, isn't having autonomy over your own purchases and finances a good thing? It's not 'cheap', it's responsible and avoids money getting in the way of friendships.

This (widely disparate eating patterns between friends) used to be a problem, but then we hit on a solution: at the end, when the bill comes, each person adds up what they ate/drank, and adds 30% to that (which covers the tax + tip). Some items can be ordered "for all", and the persons who did that take ownership of those too. It's worked beautifully so far.

30%?? How much do you tip??

With ~10% tax and 20% tip, that seems right on the mark to me. I guess it would be less in places without sales tax.

That was one of the really weird things I noticed in the USA when I visited recently: this bizarre tendency not to include tax in the prices. Tell me what I need to pay you, not what you're going to end up having received!

Couldn't agree more. There are lots of other nefarious tactics, like "resort fees" at hotels. We're the land of the fee, I suppose.

Why not just say "separate bills" at the beginning, so that you get them itemized individually?

I do not ask for this unless the server offers it. It takes longer to get the bill and pay for it, then if the server is busy / inattentive they just dump the cards on the table and let the group of 12 adults squint at Chase cards.

I can't remember the last time I visited a restaurant where the server didn't ask how the check(s) should be handled.

I _always_ ask for this if its what I want and the server doesn't offer it. They offer up front because its 10x easier to do knowing thats the plan going into it than having to split things up afterwards.

So much for the tip system ensuring better service. I can't imagine a server doing that around here. Then again, we use Chip&Pin, so it's not like they could take them all anyway.

I'm asking myself exactly the same thing. I've never "split" a bill, but I've requested separate bills plenty of times and always gotten them, it's nothing out of the ordinary in Germany.

Imho it's also the most reasonable approach that doesn't put anybody in an awkward position.

With a large party (6+), it becomes difficult for the wait staff to track the orders. And it takes longer to get the bills at the end. Some places won't do more than 2-3 bills also.

Is it that much less awkward to send someone money afterwards vs figuring out the bill "offline" that the alternatives only are "venmo" or "evenly split"? (FWIW, around me the default is everyone paying for themselves, at the restaurant/bar/..., so this "bias" towards splitting seems weird to me)

Agreed. In my experience, the only people who ever get upset about dividing bills accurately (fairly!) are people who have money and don't care.

Why expecting people to pay what they owe upsets so many people I'll never understand..

What I worry about is that Venmo is an expression of "everybody is too poor to actually cover each other", and that's a damn shame if true.

The way we, now aged, uncool, unhip folks used to deal with this was that we would cover people like you discreetly.

One of the better off folks (read: professional receiving a paycheck rather than starving grad student) would take charge of the "pot", would figure out what was lacking and generally "tell" a couple of the other better off folks what to put in. I never had an issue covering an entire bill for someone and neither did any of the other folks. 1) We asked you to join us because we appreciate your company and 2) people probably did this for us when we were the poor ones.

This works very well unless you have someone freeriding who shouldn't (we had two people in our group who were really well-paid programmers who did this). When that happens, I would itemize the free-rider in excruciating detail and if he didn't put in every red cent, I would call him out on it.

I think this really speaks to the issue - by making things quick, easy, and fair-with-documentation, we lose out on the opportunity to practice a bunch of hard-to-relearn (and imo valuable) social skills and machinery that comes with interpersonal debts. see Graeber - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

Agreed. This happened to me when I was in college but was working a nice internship. Group lunch with coworkers: I ate a cheap burger with water and ended up helping pay for their salmon and fancy drinks. Did not appreciate it, and would have rather not gone.

I'm reading this as someone being upset that they were asked to pay for what they ordered, with the excuse that the app somehow makes the world less "chivalrous."

I say whatever. I'm not friends with people because I trade off doing nice gestures. Some people account for their money and would greatly prefer to balance the books. Fine. Is it really a big deal to pay what you owe? It's not like they asked you more effort or money. Pay the fucking invoice.

If someone wants to be nice in Venmo literally nothing is stopping them. Realistically, when I pay people on Venmo I tend to add a few bucks to round up. But expecting others to do that kind of thing seems stupid to me. The person on the other end is not nickling and dining you. You're trying to do that to them by suggesting you don't just pay the bill.

P.S.: I'm sick of hearing the phrase "silicon valley mentality." It's literally an app that bills people, there's 10s of them out there, none of them encourage any specific kind of behavior than what the person behind the phone takes from it.

Thank you. A lot of people on here seem to forget that not everybody has six-figure tech job. I write down every single one of my expenses and every single penny I earn in my budget. An unexpected $25 can really throw me off.

Exactly - and the idea this somehow stops that small favour stuff is rubbish. You can use an app like this and still buy your friend a drink - it's just it's a choice you are actively making, not one being imposed on you to save time or effort.

It also means that I can order something expensive without feeling bad that I'm imposing on everyone else when we split the bill evenly. This is particularly relevant when you have friends with different incomes or lifestyles.

I'm pretty sure there is a Friends episode about this. Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I53n7ldcSGo

I'm reading this as someone being upset that they were asked to pay for what they ordered

So you assume some unstated motivation behind something and then get angry about the thing you just made up? Hmmm...

I said reading as not assuming.

When I spend more at dinner, I eyeball the cheque and ask for a little more to be put on my card. If we're alternating between who picks up the tab, I'm mindful about buying them drinks. Venmo just makes cash-only, "no more than 2 cards" dining and vacation booking easier.

Note that I've had friends try to split bills to the penny. I tell them to stop, because both our times are worth more than that. (The exception being if I know they need the extra cents, in which case it still seems more reasonable to round down in their favour.) That kind of gentle social shaming is productive and something I've noticed a lot of people my age shy away from.

TL; DR If you think Venmo is ruining your friendships, it probably isn't Venmo.

Addendum: One useful thing I've found about reimbursing (note: NOT splitting, which is what you were talking about) some other bills down to the penny is that it makes it much easier to search for them afterward if you want to figure out whether you remembered to pay for them. Like if you buy someone dinner and they insist on paying, don't round $10.49 down to $10 or up to $11. Because then you have different numbers showing up on different accounts (credit card statement vs. bank statement vs. Venmo/whatever) and it makes it harder to see if you remembered to pay for it or not.

Aside from the social awkwardness/pettiness, it doesn't really work for typical bill splitting anyway, since it's not like they would remember what amount to search for, given that usually the person paying has the only receipt. Where this method really shines is when someone is reimbursing you in a bulk/lump payment -- in that case it's far more valuable to know that the actual amount was $304.01 instead of just something rounded to $300, since then it'll be a lot more work to figure out if that payment included a $6.23 item or another $7.98 item or whatever.

If you like this, you might like the free workshops from You Need a Budget. I like to think of it as teaching "poor person's double entry accounting". (The workshop is free because they're trying to sell you their $50/year SaaS.)

https://www.youneedabudget.com/classes/

It's not really about budgeting or tracking your expenses, rather it's about (1) making it easier to search for the exact amount and having the payment pop up (e.g. in one shot in your email inbox, in some cases) when others ask you if they paid, and (2) avoiding a misunderstanding where someone asks you if they reimbursed you for something a few weeks later and you say "no" because the amount you looked for didn't match what they actually paid you.

If you end up with a running tally of bills (either splitting or alternating or what have you), I'd recommend SplitWise to keep track of who owes what to whom. It also has a simplify debts feature so that if you owe X to a friend and a friend owes Y to you (where X>Y), the friend who owes you can just pay the friend whom you owe directly. It also works great for rent, utilities, pizza, etc. in a room mate situation which is mentioned in the original article.

>"It’s making people less generous and chivalrous,” Ms. Pennoyer said. “It used to be you’d go to a restaurant, and you’d put down your credit cards and split it 50-50, even if one person had steak and one had chicken. But now people pay exactly to the cent."

Spoken like the person who always orders steak.

I don't drink, so I'm always irritated when I go out to dinner with a bunch of people and someone says "let's just split the tab evenly. It's too much trouble to figure it all out." Since drinks are so expensive relative to food either I speak up and look like the jerk or end up paying much more than I should.

The infamous "unpopular subsidy of Wally's lobster" Dilbert cartoon covers this, although we had a coworker at my last job who took it to the next level. We'd go to lunch and this guy would wait for everyone else to chip in their money (tip included) and then he'd see how much was left, claiming he didn't have change for a $20. But I noticed he was taking enough change back that all the tip money was subsidizing his lunch. So even if the waitress started with $20 in tips she ended up with $5 when Rick was done.

The next time we went to lunch and he conveniently didn't have change, I pulled out a stack of 100 $1 bills. I don't know if they do it any more but you could get them brand new and glued to a spine (called gluebacked). It's trivial to peel off exactly how many dollars you need. That stopped Rick's trying to steal the tips to pay for his lunch. I think was embarrassed that someone had actually noticed what he was up to and prepared for it.

But yeah I don't mind Venmo after getting skunked by friends who wanted to equally split the bill at a tapas restaurant. It made sense since we would be sharing little plates of food. So we agreed up front and then the two of them proceeded to drink everyone else under the table because of course the bill was subsidized.

I'm usually generous and forgiving about these things, according to my wife to a fault. But for someone who doesn't drink at all to suddenly have their evening's cost doubled is no bueno. I absolutely refuse to equally split the bill if people are going to drink even if it makes me look cheap. Now drinking in England is different - everyone's expected to pick up rounds and it's equally distributed. But sheesh trying to make people (particularly those that don't as a rule drink) pick up the majority of your drinking tab is just rude.

Hopefully it's OK to reply to my own post just to correct it and name the reference as the parent post to my reply is no longer editable - "unpopular subsidy of Wally's salmon" - http://dilbert.com/strip/1995-05-11

Mea culpa on not checking my reference earlier.

I don't drink, and rarely have the most expensive entree, and hate it when people try to figure out the exact perfect split of a check. It somehow always takes longer than it should, if we're all friends here making roughly the same amount, let's just split it evenly.

Dining out with friends isn't solely about turning dollars into calories.

Considering everyone has a very capable calculator in their pocket, notebook, and camera in their pocket, it's quite easy to figure out your share. You can simply note how much your meal and drinks cost, add the tax and tip, and drop it in the middle as cash at the end.

If you go out often (2+ every one to two weeks), don't drink alcohol ($10+ per drink in NYC/SF, prob even $15+), and you don't eat meat (+15% I bet on average for a dish), and don't get dessert ($10+), why on earth should you be putting in an extra $20 to $50 more per meal? Why would I accept that from someone I consider a friend, or a guest?

The theory behind splitting the check evenly is if you go out a bunch of times it all evens out. But that doesn't happen if you split the bar tab over non-drinkers.

I don't use this app and this article kind of explains why. If I go to dinner with friends, or anything, I'd rather pick up the check than worry about splitting it. The next time, they'll pickup the tab, and so forth. That's what friends do. I don't know if I'd want to go out with someone who is going to bill me for it later, or wants to use an app to split things up. For me it just makes things superficial, awkward, and distant.

Might be a cultural thing? I have friends that have your point of view, and others where every meal out is a communal experience (everyone chips in, but everyone can eat every dish) even if the restaurant is not set up that way.

Agreed.

I think it's simple common courtesy that the person extending the invite picks up the check.

In my experience, that's culturally exclusive to the upper-middle and upper echelons of society. In working class groups, no single person is expected to pay for everything; it's split relatively evenly.

It's absolutely cultural. Within Hong Kong culture (a close friend is Cantonese), there's this funny thing where people fight to pay the bill. You typically get points for doing it before anyone else even has the chance. Sometimes a person will get up to "use the restroom" then go pay the bill away from everyone else. It's seen as a privilege and an honor to be able to pay for everyone. Considering that in the family, we sometimes go out to seafood places with a dozen or more people (all family), it can get expensive. It's a bit of a show-off thing IMO, but the family is not obnoxious about it (no one actually tries the bathroom thing with us; they just joke about it...but we also never ever split the bill or even show it around or let anyone else see it).

My family is not upper middle class but if you try to pay for everyone, you'll find someone else has already slipped their card to the waiter. I've seen relatives almost get into arguments because two people insisted on paying.

Outside of my family, I've also had friends from relatively poor backgrounds insist on paying for lunch or drinks before. And I've had wealthy friends act extremely petty down to the penny. So overall I've found it's hard or impossible to generalize too much.

See also Father Ted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk3ds-VFKBs

Weird. Perfectly normal for any groups I've ever eaten with. Easy to ask the server to split the bill.

>Perfectly normal for any groups I've ever eaten with. Easy to ask the server to split the bill.

Try that with a group of 8-12 people, especially if they all want to be charged different amounts. Some places will do it, but many wont. A lot easier for one person to pay, and others to pay them back with cash (or one of the million free payment apps like Venmo).

Where does this happen? If they want their money, they will split it and do what they have to do.

Plenty of restaurants have policies limiting how many ways they'll split a check.

Must be a regional thing, I've never heard of that. It sort of makes sense when you consider there is a flat rate for each tranasction.

So you get hosed for a 20 percent tip and the waiter can't be arsed to visit each person at the table with a card machine and ask how much they owe? I really wonder what exactly the tip is for in this situation.

Restaurants in the US don't bring a machine to the table, which I understand to be commonplace elsewhere. (At least, I have never seen one in my entire life.) The waiter delivers a paper bill to the table, often in a billfold. The diners get together cash/cards (and very rarely, checks) and put it on top of the check or in the billfold.

If you're splitting the check, you have to tell the waiter who to charge for what. If you're lucky, everyone ordered their own meals and drinks and nothing was split. Then you can usually just say "this card is mine, this card is hers, this card is his" and it works. Otherwise, you usually have to break out a pen and tally up everyone's share and write it on the back of the bill or somewhere like that.

Then the waiter goes away with your cards to the register (or a computerized POS system), runs the charges, and hopefully doesn't copy your card for their own fraudulent use. They get separate printed receipts for each paying diner and bring them back to the table along with the cards and any change (if people paid in cash).

People paying in card add their tips to the receipt and sign it, and people paying in cash leave their tips on the table. Then you're done.

Suffice it to say that this is a huge pain in the ass for everyone involved, and takes time that the waitstaff could be using to provide better service to other customers. Also, especially for smaller restaurants running on an extremely narrow margin, the credit card fees for splitting a table too many ways can be financially unacceptable.

In the US, I believe the only the only way businesses are legally obligated to settle debts is cash. Accepting credit/debit cards is a convenience offered for the customer, and printing 12 different checks (then entering them all in), is not something some places will do. Whether this is business policy or individual service staff who just won't do it, I don't know, but I've seen it happen enough times that I rarely try any more.

Reciprocity like that is easy when you're eating with the same person on a regular cadence, but harder when it's highly irregular (i.e. you meet up because you happen to be in the same city) or you see different combinations of a large group each time.

I'm not wild about blowing my entertainment budget for the month in one meal, which is what would happen if I paid for 4 people, though on a long enough time horizon (decades?) it might work out the same in the end.

> Reciprocity like that is easy when you're eating with the same person on a regular cadence, but harder when it's highly irregular

Also much easier when you're rich than when you're not.

That's a good way to make sure that people with significantly different amounts of money don't socialise together.

Or they can "pay you back" a different way. Maybe invite you over for a home-cooked dinner or something.

Not necessarily. My policy (with close friends) is that if I invite someone, I'll pick the place and pay. They can pick the place and the tab next time.

I don't want to have to worry about my friend's finances when inviting them out (I want to grab sushi with Irene, but can she can afford it?).

They can pick a cheaper place or invite me over for a home-cooked meal if they can't afford to invite me out to a nice restaurant.

I work in tech while most of my close friends are still students, the point is to be able to do nice (more expensive) things with them, which we could never do if we always split the bill.

Ever been a college student?

"Separate checks, please."

"can we split for this case of beer?"

"can we split for this pizza delivery?"

"can we do an iou for my friend who forgot their card?"

"can we split this utility bill?"

If you have more money or simply don't mind spending a lot on them in restaurant, then this strategy forces me to pay way more then I would otherwise - while I get nothing in return. Well, except socialization which is worth something.

But I still like splitting check much more. It allows me to spend/not spend how I want regardless of whether I am least or most willing one to pay for more expensive things. If I drink/eat a lot I pay a lot and I don't have to feel bad about somebody else paying it. And if I want to save money, I don't drink and don't have to worry about friend eating a lot.

One problem with the alternating tab pickup system is that if some people routinely eat more than the group average and some routinely eat less then either the sparse eaters end up subsidizing the abundant eaters, or the abundant eaters end up purposefully eating less than they want in order to make the finances fair. Both cases are likely to lead to unspoken resentment within the group.

Thank you, exactly. I'd rather just pick it up one time and expect that they do it sometimes as well. I don't want it to seem like I actually give a fuck about 12 dollars for the experience of hanging out and having a good time. And I don't.

I think the problem here is expectations. If you went to dinner with a friend, and thought everything was covered but then later received a bill in the mail there's an aspect of unexpected demands in it. If your friend said ahead of time "hey I've got this app that will let us split the bill easily, that okay?" then you'd be expecting it and there's no social transgression.

Social norms and expectations are the fiction here, not the money itself.

This app won't get much transaction in Canada though- in Toronto at least most waiters easily handle individual bills for groups. I was at a party of 12 or so the other day- no issues will the bills, everyone paid for what they ordered. Better software, or maybe better wait staff, whatever it is, it works.

Restaurants are definitely accustomed to splitting bills in Salt Lake City as well. I was surprised to come to a larger city like San Francisco and have to chase people for their share since most restaurants won't give individual receipts.

I've never been to Toronto, but in general it seems like more popular restaurants give you a harder time splitting the check, where as empty places will sometimes ask if you want the check to be split, without even having to prompt them.

My experience across Canada is any restaurant (Quebec/Maritimes I can't speak for), is that all restaurants, of any size, will ask you if you want split bills.

In fact, if anything, the small places that do their cheques on paper with pen are likely not to split anything.

You make a good point. If things were handled beforehand, such that one person says let's go out and split everything, I've got this app that will do it for us, then it takes that awkwardness off, and I think is more friendlier. It's the before-hand planning, versus the afterward billing...

I was shocked by the inability of restaurants (literally their policy) in California to do individual bills. I still can't understand why it's this way... The only reason I used Venmo was for that.

Some credit card services charge a per transaction fee as well as a percentage so spiting the check can begin to eat into his margins.

Then pass the fee on to the customer.

I have no experience with this, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was against the terms of service with the credit card company.

Because it is a time consuming pain to do that, and restaurants don't usually like dealing with cheapskates.

We seem to not live in the same Toronto

Plenty of places will give you a hard time if you try to split a bill. Kinton ramen refuses to split for parties larger than 4 (and is completely inflexible on this)

Really? I've been meaning to try them (I live near their North York location). I guess I'll make sure to only go there with my wife.

If you're into ramen and ever come downtown, give Raijin a try. Better than Sansotei Santouka and Kinton, imo.

What's good in North York?

My experience in Canada is that many Asian restaurants don't split, but everyone else does.

Not only do restaurants regularly split bills up to N ways up here but Interac eTransfers solve the electronic money transfer problem with native integration into everyone's online banking regardless of which bank it is.

Most banks charge a $1 fee for e-Transfers though.

On the contrary, I find it removes social friction if you go out to eat relatively often. You can still buy rounds of drinks or pick up the tab; no one is stopping you from being generous.

In college I found it way more tedious to try and "keep-even" with classmates. Combine that with any sort of gossip around "they always shortchange" (maybe they're not good at tax+tip mental calcs), and I'm all for removing uncertainty from friendly transactions.

I most definitely do _not_ allow venmo to share my transaction to my social circle. That seems just silly.

Yeah, I second that it removes friction. I hate the "lets split the bill evenly"-approach. It makes me feel like I leech of others if I want something expensive, and the other way around if I'm not very hungry but have to pay for everybody else having three courses.

Yeah, they ought to use bill roulette (choose a penny out of the bill to choose who pays). You still get the jerk who doesn't tip, though.

Wow. I tend to think of "not randomly destroying each other's finances" as a baseline criteria for friendship.

Sometimes you don't go out and eat only with friends...

However, like a potluck or dinner club, check roulette works great with groups you regularly eat with since it is distributed exactly according to the bill. I have groups that I eat with 30-50 times a year.

Can't you just get your own bill then? I feel like so many people make this to be way more of a deal than it needs to be.

Because the act of getting your own bill is a statement. It's no secret that you're doing it because Ted always adds a lobster tail to his steak. Or that you're doing it because you're going to order a water, no appatizers, and the Ruben because money is tight. Once you're outside of specific circles 'being broke' stops being a shared experience and it affects how people view you.

The only time you might be able to get away with it is because you're going to order the 24oz sirloin and don't want to put that on other people. But that's a statement in a different direction and could come off as elitest or insulting.

Pay for what you order lessens this awkwardness.

Sorry but this is nonsense.

The fact that there is no more rounding is a better default that we no longer must put any thought into. It's more convenient. I fail to see how it harms the relationship in a way that's "petty".

This also completely leaves out the inconvenience of planning a large gathering for friends and fronting all the money yourself. Yes, it may feel "petty" to be reminded to pay your share, but imagine if 12 people all owed you $50. I say it's petty to need to be reminded.

Please, someone explain to me how splitting expenses is a negative thing. How is it petty? How is it more "transaction" and less "relationship"?

This is just another article about how millennials are horrible, horrible people because they don't live in the 50s.

Absolutely. Rounding leads to trying to keep a mental tally of how much do I owe you vs hoe much you owe me. My wife's family is a mess with that because everyone remembers or forgets different amounts. Just let me reimburse you exactly what you paid and we will always be square. How could that be a bad thing?

This article is borderline "Millennial bait," but: Suppose I invite you over to my apartment to hang out. I offer you a beer. You accept, so I tally "1 beer" on a little notepad.

You have some potato chips. ("13 chips" goes on your tally.) You use the toilet twice, flushing both times. ("7 gallons of water" goes on your tally.) You're a bit hot, so I turn up the air conditioning. (I need to break out the calculator, but "+$0.63 for AC" also goes on your tally.) You tell me about a sad movie you watched recently. (This reminds me of a family problem I am having, which is mentally taxing. Since I'll likely need an anxiety pill, I add a fraction of the prescription cost to your tally.) You suggest a walk in the park; we go out. Walking makes me thirsty, so I buy a bottle of water. (But since walking was your idea, I add "1 bottle of water" to your tally.)

Do any of the above come across as petty - or absurd - to you? If so, then that will give you some idea of how someone might feel that splitting social meal expenses down to the penny - and with a written record, to boot - feels transactional. The point is everyone has a threshold where this kind of Venmo'ing behavior goes from innocently equitable to distrustfully penny-pinching.

Venmo'ing someone can be the equivalent of saying, "I don't trust that our relationship will proceed in terms that will average out in such a way that is fair to me." Insisting on Venmo'ing is a lot like insisting that your significant other tell you their email password. If you have to insist this in all cases, maybe rethink your relationship?

I see what you're saying. I'd say the petty part there is the tallying the small items I offered to you in my home.

Going out to a restaurant with a group is not the same thing, though. If there are three people eating at a moderately priced restaurant and one person picks up the tab, it's not petty to request reimbursement.

In a cash world, it would be petty to demand exact change because of the extra effort it requires to produce it. In an automatic payments world, it's no extra effort on either side.

>“It’s making people less generous and chivalrous,” Ms. Pennoyer said. “It used to be you’d go to a restaurant, and you’d put down your credit cards and split it 50-50, even if one person had steak and one had chicken. But now people pay exactly to the cent.”

How is this portrayed as a bad thing in the article? This solution to this problem is the ONLY reason I use Venmo. Perhaps the author was always the one ordering steak and misses his old friend-subsidized lifestyle.

> How is this portrayed as a bad thing in the article?

It takes some of the humanity out of the time spent together. Being generous with each other is part of how friendships and other relations are formed.

Among friends, boiling it down to a precise transaction is petty. If a friend is abusing this approach, that says something about both him and your friendship.

What if you just happen to enjoy steak and your friend enjoys chicken? Then in the 50-50 split, you could be seen as "abusing" the system if you two go out to dinner often, yes?

A 50-50 split is never how it works out - you look at the bill and think "X spent about £15 and Y spent about £20, so we'll put that down and then make up the change between us". Or "let's split the food 50-50 and I'll get the drinks".

When I did not had much money, I consistently prefered cheaper option. 50-50 would mean that either my richer friends can not eat what they like due to me being there or I can not socialize with them as often. Alternatively they could pay more often, but it would be hard to keep that fair and I would not like leaching off theirs money either.

I have had regular dinner with friends who liked to eat and drink a lot. Much more than I do. So I always ended up paying $50 while I myself consumed for maybe $20. Not once did any of the people who ate a lot notice that there were several people on the table who consumed only a fraction of what they consumed. Sharing is fine but I think it needs to be approximately even. You can't have people constantly taking advantage of this system and then accusing others of being cheap.

I have the opposite problem. On the rare occasions I go out to eat, I go out big and drink a lot and eat good. I get that so I always try to pay a bit more but everyone else will be like "oh no, we're just splitting evenly don't worry" and it makes me feel rude.

Luckily around here a lot of places have set menus and are all-you-can-drink including alcohol which simplifies things a lot.

There are other countries on this planet that have long had the custom of paying for exactly what you ordered instead of splitting the bill 50-50. Near as I can tell, having lived in a few of those places for many years, the people there have plenty of humanity and generosity and lack pettiness.

This is one of the worst article I read in a long time - also I couldn't disagree with it more. I like eating salads and my friends like eating stakes - Venmo and Square Cash makes it so easy for us to spend time together and split money in a sensible way (how splitting it in a half would be sensible in this case?). Saying that this make friendship transactional is just bullshit - it makes them honest. And people thinking they they are charged for friendship because they have to pay for their own meal need to rethink it.

Totally agree. From my experience the people who get offended are the ones that eat and drink the most.

I think a lot of people are totally unaware that Venmo transaction details are public-to-the-world. Fascinating experiment in radical transparency.

Also, per NYT:

""More supportively, Noam Waksman, a 24-year-old who works in digital marketing in New York, said he has “been called out by friends before, for charging my girlfriend for a meal,” which they had spotted on Venmo.""

This is an interesting dynamic - normally the quasi-transactional stuff in dating is not made so explicit. A friend who wrote a web app like Splitwise/Bluechips about ten years back reported that he quickly stopped working on it because "girlfriends hated it".

You can change the publicity of a transaction to private or friends only.

Oof yeah I should be more precise -- I think the surprise is "public default".

They do make it super easy to find the setting "default audiences for future transactions: private" plus "past transactions: make to private" and I would wildly speculate it is interesting that many people don't think about whether or not they should do that.

I don't understand why Venmo is such a popular app. I've always used Square Cash and just recently tried Venmo for the first time. My sister and I had dinner and she offered to split the tab. She refused to try Square Cash and had me download Venmo. On the iPhone it felt like buggy port with some weird social feature that allows users to see public transaction.

Venmo significantly predates Square Cash, and once you get used to using a particular app for a task switching is a burden, especially for something like this with a powerful network effect.

As far as I remember, Paypal significantly predates Venmo. What happened there?

Venmo got its initial traction through college students. I doubt most college students had a paypal account to begin with.

The Paypal app was late, and didn't really support the seamless Venmo experience, because initially Venmo allowed you to sign up with a CC and ate the fees. Later, with enough momentum and usage, they moved people to direct deposit by adding the CC fee and giving some other incentives.

The company was acquired, along with BrainTree, by Paypal to bolster their mobile and API-driven payments in the present age.

Venmo is more social than PayPal, and the brand is cooler. Given PayPal own Venmo I think they realize the value of this.

Paypal was late, inconvenient, and (probably most damning) the brand became closely associated with scary things in the minds of many - freezing accounts, not giving funds to their perceived "rightful" owners, general legal troubles that cast doubt on whether you'd get your money.

It didn't really matter that those mostly happened to people moving 5-6 figures, most of the millenials I know actively avoid paypal as a result.

This is only the case if you were very late to p2p transactions. Venmo was well embedded in my social circles by the time there was any competition (with the possible exception of Google wallet. With something so utility-oriented, why go out of your way to rebuild an entire network?

You may as well ask why anyone uses Facebook when Google+ had better features on launch (like post visibility granularity).

But it's a US thing, right ? Here in Belgium/Europe I can take out my smartphone, open my bank app, input my friend's account number and send him money right away (35 years ago you had to do it by paper, 25 years ago there were computers in the bank and now it's on the phone/tablet/web browser). Of course it's really going from one bank to the other so it's not p2p but the UX is as smooth.

Yeah. Even in the UK - which is behind much of continental Europe in terms of banking - you can send money to anyone's bank account immediately and for free given their account number. Neither of these things are true in the US (at least going via the bank, hence why Venmo / Square Cash / etc exist).

In North America, given a bank account number, you can pull money from it (this is how cheques work over there).

In Europe, given a bank account number, you can put money into it (this is how "giros" work).

This fundamental difference in banking system has caused endless pain for the US and its hyperlocal banking system. Canada overcame this by having a home grown debit card system expand into online payments.

I've never even heard of Square Cash before and I don't know anyone who uses it. "Sending money for free" is a very simple story, so whichever app is most widely installed wins. I already have and use Venmo and Google Wallet regularly; I'm not installing a third. Too many things to keep track of.

I also don't get it. Google Wallet has been around for ages and couldn't be any simpler or easier. These kids obviously haven't been burned by PayPal yet.

They fail to consider that venmo and other simple cash transfer applications lower the barrier to payment of items down to the penny. Time isn't free and I would be annoyed if a friend demanded I reimburse down to the penny for something in hard cash. Asking for me to type a number into an app is so easy it's petty to worry about those pennies and a waste of time. What a ridiculous article.

It is possible to make one’s ledger and contacts private, but many users overlook these options ...

I'm sorry, what? The default is to make all of my transactions public? What the absolute living f---.

It's not all transactions, just social ones. People share their personal information on social media all the time, particularly information that relates to a social interaction. Since money is often a component of social interactions, a public record of social transactions essentially adds no information to what people have already voluntarily posted on other social forums. I use Venmo all the time, and since the dollar amounts aren't shown (only the participants and a short memo) I generally feel comfortable with public transactions. More sensitive interactions I make sure to set private.

A friend once paid me back for a "sensitive interaction" and put a snowflake emoji in the comment. I don't know if it was public. It was tacky and thereafter I only took cash for such transactions.

It should be noted that the dollar amounts are never shown to anybody except the individuals involved in the transaction.

When I scroll through my Venmo feed, all I see is "Mike paid Jen for pizza".

Classic pre-venmo humor article "Caltech Physicists Successfully Split the Bill". http://www.theonion.com/article/caltech-physicists-successfu...

In the old days it could take as long to split the bill as to eat for a double digit dinner party. Not to mention cheapskates who conveniently forget beverages and appetizers.

One paragraph in I thought to myself "haven't I read this before?"

A quick google later: https://qz.com/687395/venmo-is-turning-our-friends-into-pett...

http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

That article has a funnier lead. Offering a glass of wine in your own home, then billing for it afterward. That person was probably an asshole before venmo existed.

Agree! Same basic structure though.

Maybe its because I live in a semi-rural part of the Midwest, but I've never even heard of Venmo.

> Ms. Pennoyer agreed and recalled childhood taxi rides, when two adults would fight to treat the other

That still happens around here. (Well, we don't really have many Taxis around here, but it happens with meals at restaurants and such. I can recall occasions not too long ago where friends and I would all try and sneakily pay for the meal before the others noticed.)

My wife and I lived in SF for a while and stuff like that is part of the reason we came back.

Also rare among people over 40.

Yeah, I only use Venmo when I'm on the coasts. None of my friends in the Midwest have it, and maybe I'm just used to it, but it just felt inefficient to split the bill and wait for each person to pay with their own credit card rather than having one person pay and Venmo them back.

Part of it is probably that a decent enough chunk of places (especially bars) in the Midwest are cash only. Personally I prefer always keeping some extra cash in my wallet to throwing even more of my life onto the internet.

(I also find keeping my entertainment budget "cash only" really helps me think critically about what I want to buy)

This seems to be a generational and geographical gap. Speaking parochially, among relatively well-off 40-ish Australians acting like this would mark you as some kind of cheapskate space alien.

I remember being similarly surprised at the 'down to the last penny' bill-splitting when I first got to the US, but, as a lot of people remark on in other threads, many of the social gatherings weren't really very long term (e.g. a random collection of Bell Labs interns).

I'm sure that there are good reasons people act this way, but the impression that I have to fight down when someone acts like this that you're either cheap, broke or paranoid about being taken advantage of. I think there are occasions where everyone needs to get a little more fine-grained (especially not doing the thing where non-drinkers subsidize drinkers) but the amount of time some people fritter away on these calculations makes me wonder what their time is worth...

> among relatively well-off 40-ish Australians

The same is true in the US. Note the ages and geographic locations of the people mentioned in this article.

Among well-off middle-aged (40+) Americans, in my experience it's more typical for people to compete to pay the ENTIRE bill, every single time, rather than attempting to share. Generally it's bad form to seem like you're competing to pay the bill, but very socially desirable to be known as someone who will pay the bill (and thus must have the money to do so).

You can easily keep your transactions private on Venmo. I think the benefits outweigh the negativity mentioned in the article - it has made our lives more efficient.

However, their scam protection (https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/19/15997768/venmo-scam-fake-...) has room for improvement..

Ha, such a non-issue to us petty bean counting Germans, we always split the bill and it's only a problem like once a year with particularly stubborn wait staff.

Yes, maybe I'm generalizing a bit too much, but you're usually asked if the bill will be split if you're obviously looking like a couple. I'm leaning towards preferring that way. I've no problems buying friends a beer or two, but a) I don't want to be overthinking what I am gonna eat and drink if the bill will be split evenly (like in other countries) and b) sometimes there's really people I don't want to subsidize (e.g. coworkers instead of friends).

I lived in Germany in the '90s and loved the way they split bills at the restaurant. In fact, there wasn't even any "splitting"—you paid for whatever you ordered. The server wore a money pouch and sometimes even a coin dispensing machine. She would walk around the table and ask each person what they ordered, would write the prices down on a neat little recycled paper pad that was about 1" wide and 6" tall, hand it to you, and you paid her immediately. No tips (you rounded up sometimes), no guilt—just German efficiency. Geil!

Well I'd say tips are common - but in the ballpark of 5%-10%, and also usually no hard feelings if you don't tip or just round to the nearest EUR.

A few friends and I had dinner together every Wednesday at Tied House. I made a website to split the bill and track debt, so that every week whoever owed the most money to everyone paid the bill. The levels of debt stayed pretty low.

https://github.com/AustinWise/DinnerKillPoints/

The heart of the system is a bill splitter:

https://github.com/AustinWise/DinnerKillPoints/blob/db54eec9...

And some simple graph algorithms to analyze the debt-graph and render the results with GraphViz:

https://github.com/AustinWise/DinnerKillPoints/blob/db54eec9...

I guess I'm too old. Have heard of Venmo but don't know of anyone who uses it. My friends and I trade off treating each other. It's fun, and no one is keeping score. I enjoy being generous.

I also suspect this author writes off anecdotal info, not actual data.

Take his comparison to libertarianism. Anyone who studies the actual political platform/ideology of libertarians know that describing it as "every man for himself" is a gross oversimplification. I'm not a libertarian myself but I know it doesn't discourage generosity or philanthropy.

Such lazy references make me think the author heard someone riffing about Venmo at a bar and decided to write rant.

The default setting isn't pro-privacy? Really? WTF?

What's next? I gotta idea! Let's get the app to ask for net promoter scores ...

Would you recommend this friend to a friend ... no=1 yes=10

I find Venmo very useful, but one of the first things I did was make any payment from or to me private. I don't understand why anyone would want to make that public.

Well, there is a multi-billion dollar industry built on top of public transaction records...

Splitting the check used to be a ridiculous exercise of handing the wait staff a deck of plastic with instructions like '20 more on the blue card'. So now one person can bear the costs and charge everyone at the end of the evening. This is marginally better, ideally you could just 'venmo' the venue directly but this would upset the mediocrity of US banking infra and the card monopolies.

I recently deleted venmo in favor of fb messenger pay. I think it's US only right now, but it's just one less app on my phone. I also always hated how venmo held on to your money if you forgot to withdraw it.

It also just makes sense. I send and receive text, photos, videos, and now money from friends in one place.

If you're from the old school and prefer something commandlineish, Ward Cunningham has a neat little AWK script to calculate everybody's share of a group expense:

http://c2.com/doc/expense/

I used to be a big fan venmo as a cash/check replacement, until a friend needed some emergency cash. Tried to venmo them, both accounts ended up being frozen for over a week. A check + USPS would have been 6 days faster.

I'm pretty sure nothing has changed, it's just easier to split bills now.

This is not a good idea. I don't want some company like venmo/paypal/brantree/visa looking datamining every last cent and transaction that I spend. Who knows who they could sell the data to or if they get hacked. Just use cash and tell the server what you ordered. They will give you an individual check, with totals on it. If theres >10 people yes you might need to pay 10% extra fee but that's better than subsidizing someone's 3 $15 cocktails, $30 steak, $10 dessert.

I refuse to link my financial activity and things involving my physical address to Facebook, which Venmo seems to require. This is insanity to me. And I am a millennial as well.

It does not require this. I use Venmo and do not have Facebook.

I use Venmo without a Facebook account. Works fine.

I find that this article's contention of nickel-and-dining millennial is one instance where technology has enabled a huge change in social mores.

Nickel-and-dining was a problem in the days of loose change, where counting small change was a huge hassle. With Venmo this problem simply does not exist. On the other hand, I would say that payments and reimbursements between friends accurate to the penny on Venmo reflects well on you as a conscientious person.

One friend of mine will regularly pay for group dinners or events and Venmo each person their share. He does this so he can get rewards/points on his card.

I do this too. I use my credit card for everything but my SO only uses it for big/online purchases so I love splitting things with her. Double the cash back!

This is clearly a PR piece for Venmo disguised as some sort analysis of grave social change.

I never heard of Venmo before this article! How did it end up on the HN front page?

Also see http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Huh. I've never even heard of this app in Canada. Around my office we just use PayPal for that kind of thing where needed. Hamilton here (near Toronto).

I've found a lot of us startup brands missed the boat invading Canada and let eBay eat their lunch here. Kijiji beat Craigslist for example.

NYTimes susbscriptions:

Starting at a low $2.63 per week.

"Teddy Wayne’s most recent novel, 'Loner,' comes out in paperback in August."

I thought that was funny.

Honestly it sounds extremely freaky.. I didn't know that people in the valley, that probably earn some multiple of my income, were so scaringly attached to fractions of dimes when going out with friends that they desperately needed an app for this huge first world problem..

in many places I have worked this petty attitude would get you marked as not a culture fit

Thanks to Venmo, I now know all about transactions between people I don't know. I honestly can't understand why that stream is considered useful at all, much less as a feature that has the entire first tab devoted to it.

For some reason, I never felt this as a friction or problem needed to be resolved. In the Netherlands everybody (really!) uses debit cards, so it's easy to have people pay for what they got.

Beer, however, is when you get to be charitable.

The funny thing about these services is, is that in europe they have a hard time getting ground. With most banks the default bank app can do these things. Some things like requesting money also across different banks.

This is cultural, your response this behaviour is based on your upbringing.

Venmo is fine used among friends but is a major fraud vector otherwise.

I expect most other uses of Venmo in the USA to be supplanted by Zelle over time.

I had never even heard of this app. Yet it seems to be for people in my generation (25). I'm really happy that this is not something that happens in my social circles.

Could be a cultural thing. Most of my social circles involve Latin American people, which is quite a mindset difference from the standard European / American mindset.

Though, even with my European friends this does not happen. I don't mind having paid more than one of my friends at the end of the evening, it'll even out eventually.

What if it doesn't even out eventually? I like to get 4-5 cocktails when I go out, and am usually the one getting steak instead of chicken (to use the article's analogy) -- so I almost always dine on significantly more than the average person at the table. If we just split uniformly, I'm definitely taking advantage of the other people at the table, so what options are there? Of course, I could pitch in more for that evening's bill, but once we're at the point that we're splitting it unevenly, then I don't see how that's any different than venmoing someone instead, and that's a lot easier than dealing with cash.

There is no way it evens out for someone who doesn't drink alcohol and/or eat meat.

Between Venmo, FB, Twitter, and now SnapMap it's scary how much you can learn about a person you've never even met...

Also, wouldn't be shocked to start seeing venmo exchanges being used in courtcases

So asking for 31.61 is socially unacceptable, while asking people to mail you a check is okay?

Another 'how [tech company/product] is ruining [social norm]' thought piece.

Right, and this is more of an evolution of generation. This is a social norm amongst millennials.

Not in my neck of the woods. If you sent a Venmo request amongst us you would be invariably called an asshole (and it wouldn't be a kind way of saying it, that sort of thing is real shitty). We use Venmo to push money around (Square Cash is nicer, but that ship has sailed), but it's more like "ehh, $25 is about right and I'll get it next time so the rounding will work in my favor".

We are not doing down-to-the-penny nonsense because that would be silly and we are not dunning our friends because that would be awful.

I live in a transplant city dominated by young professionals. Multiple roommates (paying for utilities, grocery shopping together, house-shopping), many nights out a week with friends, etc. all yield to a multitude of spotting cash/credit for everyone.

The only assholes are the ones who freeload often. venmo keeps everyone in check.

What is your neck of the woods, partner?

I live in Boston, which is about as young-and-transplanty as it gets.

I don't know, maybe I just hang out with folks who take friendship with a degree of seriousness, but nobody I know would need to dun somebody in either our group or our extended group to pay their share. You grab the bill, you eyeball it for your stuff, you add twenty percent for tip, you're done.

If you try to freeload, you just wouldn't be invited again. Because friends don't do that, just as they don't send each other invoices.

OT: Long time ago, I had friends who made 150k-200k/yr. You won't believe it but they remembered every single Euro they lent and always insisted on the pay back. Never met such folks again.

I've been using Square Cash lately.

Paid propaganda piece (TM)

I see systems like Venmo being commoditized and Venmo being an acquisition target or being disruptive for large banks . My reasoning is below.

I must not be a true milennial (29) .The new hip social networks don’t make sense to me or don’t work. Not only that but if this is a feature of Vennmo I’ll stay with only transferring cash to people with boring old Chase Quickpay with a bank account I don’t have to pay for without Venmo fees.

Edit: Sorry I should have read up on this.

> I must not be a true milennial (29) .The new hip social networks don’t make sense to me or don’t work. Not only that but if this is a feature of Vennmo I’ll stay with only transferring cash to people with boring old Chase Quickpay with a bank account I don’t have to pay for without Venmo fees.

I think this is less "not a hip millennial" and more "commenting on something you don't understand". Venmo doesn't have fees.

The reason everyone started using venmo is because it predates anything even remotely as usable (try getting bank account numbers from 15 people at a dinner). The introduction of usable p2p transfer by eg banks was motivated by venmo's success.

Venmo was already acquired by PayPal last year. I don't think it's an acquisition target anymore.

And technically, Venmo was acquired by Braintree, which was subsequently acquired by PayPal.

Venmo was acquired by Braintree in 2012. Then Paypal acquired Braintree in 2013.

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