See title. That’s the question.
You forgot Zelle and probably others. I’ve used Venmo, Zelle, Paypal. Not Cashapp. They’re all about the same. Venmo is good for splitting checks, but for some reason thinks it’s a social app so everyone can see your transactions if you don’t explicitly mark them private, wth?. Paypal seems to have more users overseas, or at least I’ve sent funds successfully to SE Asia that way. Otherwise little difference between them.
The very important differences are hard to tell. Security is number 1. Way ahead of any discussion of what is number 2. Number 2 is, who accepts payment in this format? Sites have to adapt to take payment from various schemes. I think Paypal is still above most, other than credit cards.
Security is paramount. Try and search out the security levels of any pay system. What data are they keeping? How secure is that data.
Personally. All I do is credit card, debit and cash. Paypal does one automatic thing for me. Unfortunately it and other things, do not allow easy support of important freedom of information projects. Such as WikiLeaks.
Make sure a payment system is secure!
I’ve had PayPal for a long time and have been happy with it.
My gf “borrowed” some cash one day and later reimbursed me via Venmo or Zelle, I forget which. I searched for it and downloaded the app, only to find it didn’t work with my small, local bank.
I refused the money, sending it back to my gf.
Of course, all of these are far, far ahead of traditional banking, since they all have a nonzero amount of security.
My preference is Zelle because of the ones I use (Venmo, PayPal) that goes straight into my bank account. With Venmo and PayPal, I have to take an extra step and remember to transfer it in my bank account, otherwise it stays in the Venmo/Paypl account. That’s not a big deal, but it’s one extra step and sometimes I forget I have an extra grand or so sitting in one of these accounts.
Generally I prefer Zelle. It uses a secure bank-to-bank transfer, the money is in your account almost instantly.
However, you cannot cancel or retract a Zelle transaction. So I only use it with people I personally know and trust.
The terms of service on them differ a bit. If your just splitting a pizza with friends, it isn’t going to matter. If you’re using them for some sort of business transaction, then it might, if you’re the business.
For example, at one point in time, Venmo required a business account to receive business related payments, but Cash did not. Business accounts typically have a service fee.
They also might have different limits on the size of single payments, and the total value of payments in a given period of time. Again, not a big big deal if you’re sending your brother $30/month for your share of the T-mobile family plan.
The ability to cancel or retract a transaction is one of the huge gaping security holes in the traditional banking system.
I’m another who has had PayPal for a very long time, even before eBay bought it. I’ve never had an issue with it, but I use it strictly like a debit card and don’t keep any cash on the website. A lot of e-tailers allow it as a payment option.
I’ve had PayPal for a long time but haven’t used it for maybe 10 years. I haven’t heard of the others. I guess they’re not available in my country.
What are you using these apps for?
I use Venmo to pay the guy that mows my yard. When my nieces and nephews are selling things for school fundraisers, I’ll buy whatever it is and send their parents the money.
Indeed. In banking, finality (the principle that when a transaction is done, it’s done and cannot be cancelled again) is considered a desirable feature, not a bug, of payment and settlement systems.
I use Zelle to send or receive money from my parents and other family members. I also use it to pay local service people and professionals whom I know and trust. Some people have really small operations and don’t take credit cards. For example, a woman we know has a business making sushi bakes in her kitchen.
Well, with a credit card you can do a chargeback if something goes wrong with a purchase. Does that mean there’s a flaw in the credit card system?
Because to be clear, in the case of Zelle, the transaction is not refundable, even in a case of fraud. There is no equivalent to a chargeback with Zelle.
Oh ok. That can all be done using the banking system here so I guess that’s why the services aren’t here. I think I had PayPal in the olden days because I needed it for eBay.
To be frank, I think there’s a lot that’s wrong with the credit card system. It’s very prone to fraud, and it still has, in many cases, merchants wait for the money for long periods (plus the uncertainty whether the money, once received, will remain theirs). Consumers think they don’t need to care because those things don’t affect them, but in the end such disadvantages are all factored into the prices that consumers pay.
Yes. It means that every time a merchant accepts a payment, they have to trust the customer to actually honor that payment. A customer might say “No chargebacks means I’ll only deal with businesses I trust”, but having chargebacks means the business must trust the customer. And if you need trust, better that it’s in the direction of trusting the business, because it’s a lot easier to verify that a business is trustworthy than a customer.