Send Money to Friends in Messenger(newsroom.fb.com) |
Send Money to Friends in Messenger(newsroom.fb.com) |
[1]: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/after-2-years-in-be...
[2]: http://googlecommerce.blogspot.com/2013/05/send-money-to-fri...
[3]: http://allthingsd.com/20131015/the-money-is-in-the-email/
But this totally tells us about how slow facebook is moving. They had 100x people, 100x money but still end up 2x slower.
I personally use SquareCash all the time, and also use PNC bank's complimentary POPmoney setup to transfer funds for free (with PNC, I scheduled a partial rent payment to go to my landlord's bank account automatically every paycheck).
What happens if I lose my phone , someone adds himself and send money , oh crap ! But Facebook knows where we are sending money , will it be helpful enough to nab a thief ?
BTW I just send money using PayPal to a Facebook friend and let him know using Facebook messenger. I would totally use this when it's available.
Guess that indicates how much people like Snapcash.
On a side note - no AmEx or Bank Account option...
Fucking typical.
I'm amused.
Seriously?
"I am a wealthy Nigerian heir of our national oil company. I need my funds unlocked but unfortunately do not have $100 for internet access. Please send $100 and you will get your share of my inheritance in the billions of dollar."
I know, I know, it's not the tool...but I am reminded of a certain scene from The Fifth Element...
"I hate warriors, too narrow-minded. I'll tell you what I do like though: a killer, a dyed-in-the-wool killer. Cold blooded, clean, methodical and thorough. Now a real killer, when he picked up the ZF-1, would've immediately asked about the little red button on the bottom of the gun. "
I have seen far too many places -- whether they're side projects, smb, or even enterprises -- completely miss the antifraud step. There are companies like MaxMind who <help identify and somewhat prevent this> but for someone who is above average-intelligence and an apt "carder", it's so trivial to get around.
When I'm tasked by x company -- a bank, company, security team, or someone with a side project -- to run through their site and try to get an order shipped using false credentials, I can't even speak to how easy it is for me to do so with trivial effort. And it's not all fun to see.
There is a company who does gift cards, and they'd ship them out instantly. Once redeemed by the other merchant, bam, they're SOL.
Don't be this company. Don't be this entrepreneur. Don't be this hacker. Reach out to someone who knows what they're doing. If your business relies on conducting transactions, I don't care if it's flowers or dog leashes, or some shit that's going to end up on Shark Tank, you need to have anti-fraud in place.
-bitcoiner's fantasy.
That being said, if you haven't ever checked your 'other' folder you probably should. Last time I saw this mentioned people had missed wedding invitations, potential dates and more from people they weren't facebook friends with trying to reach them.
You get to it by clicking the message icon in the blue bar at the top and then clicking the small text 'other' in the top left of that pop up.
The current situation is almost comical. "Do you have Venmo? Haven't set that up yet, can you send over Paypal?. No, what about Square Wallet? Nope, what about Gmail?"
On a related note, this continues Facebook's unfortunate user-interface decision to replace the simple "send" button in Facebook Messenger with a row of increasingly crowded and not-particularly-useful buttons to send various "other" things.
And it's used extensively there. Just last month, during Chinese New Year, WeChat added a feature that let Chinese users send money to their WeChat contacts, following in the tradition where people give red envelopes of money (红包) to family members and friends. From what I hear, it was incredibly popular—I even received one myself from a Chinese friend.
I wouldn't underestimate the potential popularity of this move. Especially once they open this up to countries outside the US.
I then searched for the term on the page and noticed that the term is largely clustered around two threads; one of which the users both drop the name so much I had to check if they worked for the company.
No offense to those who enjoy Venmo and its services, but this thread is a great example of HN commentary echo; it's way louder in here than it actually is.
My friends in the Bay Area, in contrast, are far less likely to know about Venmo and either use none of these options or are pretty fragmented.
YMMV, of course :) it just seems like Venmo has done really well in one particularly large market, and the other ones are still way more fragmented.
http://www.businessinsider.com/venmo-splitting-a-group-check...
I just did a quick run through of my office (Minneapolis/St Paul snowboard, etc. online retailer): asking who has heard of it or uses it. Of the 30 or so I asked, 1 person has it on his phone and he says he never uses it.
I _did_ have a conversation where I was told 'I usually pick it up then they get me back later' which a few people in earshot agreed with.
Maybe there needs to be an app to track who owes you drinks?
Back in my day, I thought we called those things favors. :)
I want to send and receive money quickly, easily, and cheaply. Now I'm also seeing what Ted is up to on my news feed. He's my Facebook friend now because we were all at a restaurant last week and they didn't let us split the bill.
Expect all of these virtual wallet payment systems to die a swift death once Visa/Mastercard/Citi/Bank Of America/Chase finally pulls their finger out.
Now if it would work outside the US and in-between different countries, that'd be the killer app. Is there anything close to that dream?
As for outside the US, I was under the impression that most banks provide a free service for these transactions.
As they say, if you could capture 1% of that market ...
IIRC, Square is only able to do this by abusing the "refund" feature of debit cards to credit money to those accounts. I read an article a while back that claimed the banks were not happy about this, and considering shutting it down (or rate-limiting it) in the future.
People really need to stop repeating this. As someone with over 30+ Facebook accounts (for games) and knows lots of other Facebook gaming friends with 10+ accounts as well as non-gamers who keep 2+ accounts (primary, parents/relatives, cosplay/hobby, work, etc...). I'd discount whatever number Facebook reports by at least 20%.
Edit: Not only might it increase adoption for the payments system, but it may further entice content creators to join FB's nascent content-platform ambitions: http://digiday.com/platforms/facebook-youtube-premium/
I have had Venmo for about 4 years now (it started at my school so we were early) and it is tied with Lyft for the startup I could not live without. Last year I sent ~$8,000 and received about $8,500 on Venmo. So a $500 diff but the amount of time it saved me versus transferring that $16,000 any other way is many, many hours.
I don't think Venmo does too well as a business (processing cash for free for years can't be good business) but they have nailed the user experience.
Id rather use bitcoin.
Although I'm sure the team had been working on it for a while (given these were relatively new hires), bringing in the paypal executives helps them have a smoother launch and scale process.
You can pay people via gmail now for your email contacts, send money to your personal friends via social media networking. I bought my Uber to work this morning completely frictionless without having to physically use my card.
It's an interesting development of recent years for sure.
Now, using Uber as an example, I request a car, get into the car, and leave the car. You never even need to open the app back up after requesting a car.
And the Cargill corollary: "Every social media company attempts to expand until it can become a bank. Those companies which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can. Here a bank is defined as some entity that stores and records transactions between people "
"It seems wrong that an email message from your best friend gets sandwiched between a bill and a bank statement," the company wrote in its announcement blog post for the feature. The service didn't catch on, perhaps in part because Facebook never truly created a friendly or familiar interface for emailing. [0]
In much the same vain, wouldn't it be that users wouldn't like to tolerate their friends who are going to bug them about the $20 they owe from last time since now they have no excuse to avoid payment. Because they can do it right there in the messenger?
This is going to be a whole new level of friends/family and money don't get on pretty well. Maybe just me though.
[0] http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/24/5443454/facebook-retires-i...
I'm sure they realize how much money Google is printing with their shopping campaigns, and FB ads haven't proven to be very rewarding for ecommerce outside of fashion/lifestyle. Adding a major feature like that would be enormous in grabbing some of that market.
User-to-user is just one piece of the puzzle. Facebook has faced a REAL uphill battle convincing advertisers of the value they add in the path to conversion. Anyone who is familiar with cross-channel attribution knows this all to well. Many of FB's recent updates have been big slaps in the face to many advertisers, but this could be a huge win.
It would in essence enable them to go from being what is typically one of the first points in the "generating awareness" stage to being a last touch success. Most advertisers are not savvy to things like attribution (hence one of the reasons AdWords still focuses on last click in their main UI), so being able to say to businesses "here is how much money you earned directly and immediately from your ad" is a huge win for proving the value they add.
Any PMs or engineers at FB--would love to chat with you about this and how it ties into the attribution picture. Seriously--it's a huge problem for you right now.
Despite gmails best efforts to block the dozens of emails offering to send me money, I still get a couple once in awhile, and like most internet users I'm pretty good at deleting them without falling for the scam.
I suspect life will be very rough on early adopters.
Instead, I could see this taking a similar direction as web authentication: instead of "Login with Google+" or "Login with Facebook" buttons, you have "Send $ to Google Wallet" in your FB-pay interface.
I'd also point out that Facebook, by virtue of having a ton of data about their users, is well positioned to do things like identity assertion and fraud analytics; two of the more critical aspects of digital payment. Makes sense to me that they join the fray.
Expired credit card churn is a huge issue for any successful SaaS business, and someone is much more likely to keep their payment details updated with a service they pay through regularly than they are entering one-off CC info. Adding FB to the mix with Apple, Amazon, Paypal and Google would make sense for a lot of companies (although probably entails a whole host of headaches).
I'm just trying to illustrate that the amount of steps required is arbitrary and doesn't really indicate security. Sure feeling uncomfortable is fine but at least this way is safer than a physical wallet simply because you can't have your cards or cash stolen and worst case your phone is stolen you can login on a computer and deauthorize the phone (plus you can use a pin).
If a friend had this but didn't have Square, that wouldn't be enough to sway me to put my CC in Facebook. I just don't think I can bring myself to do that.
I'm not sure how this is possible since doesn't that mean that anyone can just input a debit card and start withdrawing money? It is nice though because people can sign up instantly instead of it taking a couple days.
Seriously though, I don't like Venmo's "cash out" approach, but maybe that's because I don't use it enough to want to carry a Venmo balance.
I don't know how innovative it is, but it works relatively well.
https://www.interac.ca/en/interac-etransfer/etransfer-detail
The back-end is made from ACH/SWIFT which are indeed from traditional financial services. Access to these key services is restricted for liability reasons, although you can indeed make a wiretransfer from most bank accounts online. I can do 4 of these a month without any charges.
You simply load your bank's mobile app and send money to your mate using his phone number. It's pretty simple to set up and works across most major banks here.
Swish got some bad press when Moxie noticed that they "borrowed" some code, but the system is easy to use and seems to work well.
[1] http://blog.nullbyte.eu/open-curtains-in-swish-payments-serv...
It doesn't really make sense for me. I would much rather use a vendor that's sole purpose is to provide a means of money transferring. I don't need the convenience of typing a sigil followed by the amount to send money to friends. If I really can't electronically send them money, I will go out of my way to give them cash at a later date.
Companies have always started in the former, and expanded to the latter to not only diversify their "investments" (using that very loosely), but increase revenue.
It just makes sense. And from a tech company it makes sense in a world where internet banking is still only adopted by ~60% of consumers. (I know, surprised me too.)
A confuseopoly depends on an uninformed public. I'm sure there's some special reason for each of the 20 or so payment services, although I don't have the time and motivation to research. Confuseopolies are designed to screw the end user. So I'm inherently scared away from "payment services". Especially when simple cash is to fast, easy, incredibly cheap, and convenient.
Where we're at right now with payment services is roughly 80s BBS or 90s walled garden legacy services. "Wow, if the whole world were on this BBS or on compuserv then the whole world could talk together... but no there's fifty BBSes in my LATA alone"
Also it feels like improvements have been VERY slow coming. Goals finally got some much needed attention but it's still lacking. I have to do everything manually when my paycheck comes in because their goals come out daily. I don't get paid daily, why would I want that money coming out daily? I just want to set aside money for car/rent/insurance/etc when I get paid, maybe things like "wants" (a new TV, computer, etc) work better for the daily pull but even then I'd rather just set aside $XXX when I get paid through goals.
End of the day, I went with good-old-brick'n'mortar Wells Fargo because (1) I wanted to establish a long-term customer relationship with a bank that can provide me with various credit products (including for business) (2) their ATM network is ubiquitous where I live (SF) and (3) there are many branches with convenient hours for when I want to do something a little off the beaten path.
I don't give a rat's about how quickly a $10 payment is available. I care a lot more about good fraud controls, and the ability to speak to a human being, in person, when things occasionally go wrong.
"OK, here is some random bank's ATM which charged me $44 to get $40 (2 x $20) out, and now you say you don't have $12.5 in change on you ... well, shit." ... "What will you prefer: GWallet or FB ?"
But maybe I'm cynical because I'm in Austin and driving anywhere is just miserable.
Also publicize that you will be giving like $1,000 to 100 lucky fb pay users who have performed at least 5 transactions, after 2 months of fb pay.
I mean Facebook just needs to get a decent initial seed of people to add their info, and for it to be so painfully stupidly easy that every relative on Facebook can now send their nephews/nieces and grand children those $5 birthday gifts so that it spreads.
Your payee has to a) have the FB app installed, b) have a debit card, c) from a US-based bank and d) agree to add that debit card to the FB app.
It's more than just "pay on FB". Enough little hurdles to present immediate adoption friction. Many people know that you can do chargebacks on CCs but can't do that for debit cards so they have reservations about adding that debit card to online transactions (never mind that FB Pay is likely just using ACH in the background).
* gifts
* promote personal posts on news feed
* ads (promote page posts)
* some messages (you had to pay to send a message to mark for example)
* people who enter it just so they can recover their password more easily
[0] as in, it's a perfectly normal way to reimburse friends or colleagues who've paid stuff for you
clearXchange allows account holders in any of the member banks to send funds to each other and it takes about 1-2 days after the first transaction. It also allows sending funds via cellphone. If you have a Wells Fargo account, you can send funds to a BoA account holder using just their phone number.
I think the banks have done a horrible job of advertising this free no-strings-attached service.
https://www.interac.ca/en/interac-etransfer/etransfer-detail
Once you're signed up then FB have dropped the barrier to making further payments with their platform, which presumably is the purpose of this from their point of view.
Not sure if that's common or not, and i'm sure i'm in the minority, but nevertheless i figure it's a valid thought. To be clear, i'm not saying that they shouldn't be trusted, i'm saying that to a FB-ignorant person, i'm not too trusting of them.
Note: This has nothing to do with anti FB/"FB data" type of people.
Generally, they try to ensure that the liability shift is on the bank's side, by using an EMV capable system for most payments. Of course, that usually requires them to have a specific contract; banks, on their side, perform a risk assessment to ensure that they won't be covering too much fraud.
I could setup a site with a front-facing flower shop, accept orders, take in the peoples $$ legitimately, and then transact and fulfill their orders (via fraud) on 1800flowers.com for example.
I realize that anyone could do this for anything, but the weaker your weak points are, the easier it is to capitalize on them.
I bet this number is much lower than you think it is. People outside of the tech/hacker scene don't care about privacy (in this context). "Who cares if Facebook knows that I went to McDonalds?"
Simple is just that. A bank (or rather, a banking services provider. Us bancorp is the actual bank).
The tight integration with mobile payments, because of them also being a banking services provider, is absolutely flawless.
"Confinity Inc. is best known as the creator of PayPal. It was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek, initially as a Palm Pilot payments and _cryptography_ company. Confinity launched its milestone product, PayPal in late 1999."
http://jonbwhite.tumblr.com/post/66853226398/how-square-move...
"Oh you need the full $27.50 because your life will collapse due to a lack of $7.50 in cash although nobody uses cash, well, there's an ATM in the lobby thats free on my network, I'll spot you $30 on the $27.50 and you owe me a can of soda next time"
The problem with a bazzilion services all trying to extort small transactional fees either short term or long term is the marketing about their fee can't avoid mentioning that the fee is really small and we're discussing fairly small amounts of money.
I am okay with rounding off amounts with my close friends. But with other people there is that social angle with being comfortable enough when I tell them I will buy you soda next time. Plus consider this "buying soda next time" with 10 people at the same time in either direction. The question is not about $2.50 being a small amount. I like being exact about money and so do lot of my friends. May be I am from a different background where $2.50 is still money that should be cleared.
Sidenote: Usually such fees are O(1), i.e., independent of the actual amount being withdrawn (and even applies to non-monetary transactions, such as balance inquiry).
> At this point, I just want one of these pay-with-your-phone solutions to win and be ubiquitous.
I'm not saying this is a clear winner, just that Venmo is well on its way to ubiquity in this market, at least within my demographic/peer group. I'm fairly social, and I try to keep an eye on the tech that people I meet who don't work in tech are using, and Venmo certainly stands out in that regard.
I've never had a bank require that I OAuth with Facebook or give them copies of my passport in order to get an account. Bitcoin is just not the solution to this problem.
Yet, bitcoin seems like way more friction?
Point being: Learning is a lifelong pursuit, and if you don't want to learn then you will be left behind using Facebook Messenger to send money. Kidding, but you hopefully get the gist.
I'm not going to go home and remember to paypal on my desktop when I could just use the venmo app to send you money right after you paid.
It had some cute name that I can't recall right now. Hugo or something? It was spun out into a separate company to use the same philosophy to fight terrorism. That company is Palantir and seems to be Thiel's opus magnum.
What pisses me off is that we have a nearly ubiquitous way to send money in the physical world--a cheque. Yet, in the digital world we stumble to achieve the same.
I blame the profit driven corporations as each solution incurs a transaction fee and/or a proprietary solution with no interop with other systems.
My experience doing B2B money transfers: For those out of country I paid a $25-50 fee to do a wire transfer. Meanwhile bank transfers within Canada required a cash withdrawal (or bank draft), followed by a trip to the other bank to perform the deposit. Sigh.
My bank allows me to set up personal payees, though I have to go into a branch to do it. It acts just like a bill payment, which I get for free. The downside is that it takes a day (if the recipient is at the same bank) or more (if they're not at the same bank).
The plus side on the email transfer is that it is virtually instant (~5 minutes usually).
Has anyone tried TransferWise?
edit: s/screenshot/photo/
That's not true. Americans (Facebook's intended audience for this Messenger money-sending feature) can spend bitcoins directly at Microsoft, Dell, Expedia, Overstock, Newegg, Tiger Direct, DISH Network, etc. They can use and spend bitcoins theoretically received from FB friends without having a credit card, without even having a bank account.
100,000 (legitimate!) merchants worldwide accept Bitcoin - http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bitcoin-now-accepted-by-100000-merc... It is time to kill the myth of "only the dark web accepts Bitcoin".
The reality is that using bitcoin as money is very impractical, that's just a fact.
Bitcoin is becoming more and more practical as more and more merchants adopt it. Again: 100,000 merchants accept Bitcoin today, and this number is (so far) increasing rapidly.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/246mlg/bitstamp_blo...
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/25jyf1/bitstamp_ive...
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/26c1y6/buying_bitco...
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2renc7/why_dont_peo...
I could go on, all I did was search /r/bitcoin for the word "passport" and I was overflowing with results.
I guess you've never read https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade
Besides that, bitcoin is so profoundly different than traditional money systems it can't possibly be practical as money so soon. It shouldn't be practical as money so soon, but it is making progress.
I'm not sure how you read, "a passport is required to use bitcoin" from "I've never had a bank ask me for a passport when opening a bank account". My point, which I substantiated with those /r/bitcoin posts, is that it's not unusual for a bitcoin exchange to ask for a copy of a customer's passport as part of their KYC procedures.
One can deduce from the context that a passport is required to use bitcoin. It's FUD and incorrect.
What do banks require in order to open an account?
From the 1st result on google:
your name, your date of birth, your current address and phone number, Social Security number (in most cases) and your email address.
You don't need any of those to use bitcoin. You don't need any of those to buy or sell bitcoin.
I agree with that. It seems we agree that bitcoin is currently impractical, which is the crux of my argument. Bitcoin is not a practical way to send money unless the recipient already has a bank account and a bitcoin exchange account.
Coinbase has 38k: https://www.coinbase.com/about
Gocoin has 5.5k: https://ihb.io/2015-01-29/news/gocoin-announces-5500-merchan...
That's already 93.5k from merely 3 american bitcoin gateways. Add the rest of the world (China, etc) and it is clear there are 100k or more.
I'd be curious to see what the active merchants per month actually are for Bitpay and Coinbase. Until then I have a hard time believing they actually have those numbers live given the number of stories I've seen of people visiting stores/restaurants that accept bitcoin only to be told they don't do that anymore.
You deduced incorrectly. I'm saying that if the KYC system flags the recipient, for whatever reason, then they will likely be required to produce a passport.
This is obvious. What is your point? Nobody is arguing that KYC is a requirement of bitcoin. Let me break down exactly what I'm saying:
1. For the vast majority of people, bitcoin is impractical as a method of payment for every day needs.
2. As a result of this, most people don't want bitcoins, and instead prefer legal tender that is usable wherever they might need to spend it.
3. The most practical and least stressful method for converting bitcoins into legal tender is through an exchange.
4. Exchanges have KYC procedures.
Very simple.
