<story><title>People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses</title><url>https://www.marketwatch.com/story/venmo-stalkers-or-amateur-sleuths-they-out-cheating-boyfriends-spy-on-exes-and-see-who-buys-drugs-2018-05-11</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rconti</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m utterly perplexed that Venmo is even a thing.&lt;p&gt;When I first started hearing about it maybe 5-6 years ago, I just figured, I already have PayPal and Square Cash, I&amp;#x27;m too old, nobody I know uses Venmo, why bother.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve mostly ignored that it existed except occasionally hearing (usually younger) folks talking about it.&lt;p&gt;A couple of months ago I was telling some people at work that I&amp;#x27;m too old for it, and Square Cash works well enough for me, and commented that I can&amp;#x27;t see how a newcomer could be any easier than just having the money go directly into my bank account.&lt;p&gt;When a coworker informed me that Venmo payments stay in your account, my exasperated reply was &amp;quot;wait, it&amp;#x27;s WORSE than Square Cash? It&amp;#x27;s like going back to PayPal?&amp;quot; Well, you can imagine how incredulous I was when I found out that Venmo &lt;i&gt;IS&lt;/i&gt; PayPal, just with different branding.&lt;p&gt;For the past 5 years I&amp;#x27;ve been assuming Venmo is something new and cool that &amp;quot;the kids&amp;quot; are using, but I&amp;#x27;m too out of touch to bother, and suddenly I find out it&amp;#x27;s a rebranding of PayPal with all of the drawbacks of it. It blows my mind that something caught traction that is functionally worse than the competitor of the product it&amp;#x27;s a rebranding of!</text></item><item><author>gnicholas</author><text>When I first created a Venmo account, I was shocked to see users&amp;#x27; payments flowing through my feed and immediately found a way to make my payments private.&lt;p&gt;But I could never find a way to effectively unlink the social media account (FB) that I had used to find my first friend&amp;#x2F;payee. I think I unlinked the account, but I still see payments from all the people that Venmo made me follow as a result of linking the now-unlinked FB account.&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t used the app in a long time, and I wonder if this mass-unfollow feature has been added. I know they think that people open Venmo to check their feed, but some people find the public feed creepy, and it makes me use the app less in favor of alternatives.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ajkjk</author><text>I imagine my feelings about Venmo reflect a lot of peoples&amp;#x27;:&lt;p&gt;Basically it was the first way to send money on mobile phones that wasn&amp;#x27;t miserable or charged fees so everyone started using it. By the time PayPal owned it it was already popular.&lt;p&gt;Everyone wanted to easily send money for at least, like, 10 years before that. It was the first mainstream option and it still felt really late. (PayPal already existed but was... disliked. I think because of lots of horror stories about customer service, and maybe not having a convenient app interface, or requiring a bank account connection?)&lt;p&gt;The competitors are all equivalent now (FB, Google, whatever), but I would never embrace using a FB or Google product exclusively so Venmo feels like a &amp;#x27;neutral third-party option&amp;#x27; , at least to an extent, which we can use as the &amp;#x27;default&amp;#x27; payments app.&lt;p&gt;The Bank&amp;#x27;s versions (Zelle, etc) are way too coupled to banks and too big-corporation to be excited about.&lt;p&gt;If there was, say, a startup that did exactly the same thing as Venmo but wasn&amp;#x27;t affiliated with a big company (PayPal), I think everyone would happily use it. If it was, like, a B-corp or non-profit that gives proceeds to charity, I think everyone would jump ship instantly.&lt;p&gt;Basically I don&amp;#x27;t care at all about Venmo&amp;#x27;s social features, I just want to send money and prefer not to support a big corporation or give more data to FB or Google. I bet lots of people are of similar mind.</text></comment>
<story><title>People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses</title><url>https://www.marketwatch.com/story/venmo-stalkers-or-amateur-sleuths-they-out-cheating-boyfriends-spy-on-exes-and-see-who-buys-drugs-2018-05-11</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rconti</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m utterly perplexed that Venmo is even a thing.&lt;p&gt;When I first started hearing about it maybe 5-6 years ago, I just figured, I already have PayPal and Square Cash, I&amp;#x27;m too old, nobody I know uses Venmo, why bother.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve mostly ignored that it existed except occasionally hearing (usually younger) folks talking about it.&lt;p&gt;A couple of months ago I was telling some people at work that I&amp;#x27;m too old for it, and Square Cash works well enough for me, and commented that I can&amp;#x27;t see how a newcomer could be any easier than just having the money go directly into my bank account.&lt;p&gt;When a coworker informed me that Venmo payments stay in your account, my exasperated reply was &amp;quot;wait, it&amp;#x27;s WORSE than Square Cash? It&amp;#x27;s like going back to PayPal?&amp;quot; Well, you can imagine how incredulous I was when I found out that Venmo &lt;i&gt;IS&lt;/i&gt; PayPal, just with different branding.&lt;p&gt;For the past 5 years I&amp;#x27;ve been assuming Venmo is something new and cool that &amp;quot;the kids&amp;quot; are using, but I&amp;#x27;m too out of touch to bother, and suddenly I find out it&amp;#x27;s a rebranding of PayPal with all of the drawbacks of it. It blows my mind that something caught traction that is functionally worse than the competitor of the product it&amp;#x27;s a rebranding of!</text></item><item><author>gnicholas</author><text>When I first created a Venmo account, I was shocked to see users&amp;#x27; payments flowing through my feed and immediately found a way to make my payments private.&lt;p&gt;But I could never find a way to effectively unlink the social media account (FB) that I had used to find my first friend&amp;#x2F;payee. I think I unlinked the account, but I still see payments from all the people that Venmo made me follow as a result of linking the now-unlinked FB account.&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t used the app in a long time, and I wonder if this mass-unfollow feature has been added. I know they think that people open Venmo to check their feed, but some people find the public feed creepy, and it makes me use the app less in favor of alternatives.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tgb</author><text>I use it for the fact that it&amp;#x27;s popular, of course. Worse than the fact that your balance stays in Venmo is that if you make a transaction larger than your balance, it gets paid exclusively from your bank account and doesn&amp;#x27;t clear out your balance first.&lt;p&gt;Moreover, Venmo is garbage at the simplest thing of letting me find the person I&amp;#x27;m paying. The only way to distinguish between all the many people of the same name (profile pictures being far too small to see in the selection list) is to have the person actually tell you their exact ID. The fact that I have previously done transactions with them or that they are a once-removed transaction friend from me isn&amp;#x27;t displayed.</text></comment>