I like it - it's software the encourages you, maybe even forces you, to share the experience with someone else turning every user into evangelist. It also seems like it would make financial transactions very simple.<p>My only concern would be that phone numbers still haven't become non-transferable identification.<p>I'm sure you have considered these issues before but I would wonder about:<p>My parent dies and their cell phone account is turned off - how do I get their money out of this service?<p>My wife and I share a cell phone but we don't share checking accounts.<p>Someone has already created an account for my phone number.<p>I use multiple cell phone numbers.<p>etc.
Just curious: Do you eat the transaction fee if people fund their accounts with credit cards? If so... it seems like people might pay themselves thousands of dollars to rack up rewards at your expense.
It's a great idea, but in reality, it's going to be a very tough job to make it secure and legal. If you haven't read the PayPal chapter in "Founders at Work" yet, you should.
In South Africa (I moved to New York five years ago), it is common for people to transfer money from their bank account to that of a friend's electronically - either online or on your phone.<p>I was quite surprised coming to the US that it is not common here as well.
You need some kind of a security code / pin system to prevent against fraud. Venmo has to match the pin in the message sent along with the phone number the message is sent from. And proceed with the payment only if the pin matches.<p>Venmo $10 to Jenny 1990<p>Where the last 4 digits of the message - 1990 in this case - is the security pin code.
A bunch of you all emailed for invites--we're sending a batch out later this week. We'd love to hear more of your thoughts once you use it. A few cursory answers: everything is free for now (we're still trying to figure out what the transaction fees will look like, but they will be competitive with credit card), Paypal is a great comparison and as someone recced with a link Paypal Wars is an awesome read, we love the Godaddy brand too, the syntax is very flexible and constantly adapting to the way people want it to work, if anyone knows the textpayme guys would love to chat with them (i'm @kortina), Fundraiser events-YES!, and yes security and fraud are tough problems but we are eager to tackle them. Think that covers most of them. Again, thanks to those who wished us luck and provided criticism.
If it's a service that holds any large amount of money, I'd want to make sure it's associated with or somehow endorsed by a major, trusted organization. The site looks nice and all, but still like a small business.<p>Also, doesn't Paypal offer this?
Have you thought about giving the option to link to paypal accounts?<p>Early adopters will not have venmo accounts but will have paypal accounts. You may get more new users if you give the option to use funds in the paypal account. The service could at minimum send the user an e-mail with a link to the paypal destination and amount.
There are A LOT of rules around money transaction services and the feds have only gotten stronger in their enforcement of them post-9/11. You'll need to watch out for so much fraud from carders. Best of luck, but perhaps you should talk to the textpayme guys, who did some very fancy things to avoid regulation.
I think buying your own SMS short code is key to making this service look legitimate to new users. No one wants to text information about money transfers to a phone number that could be anyone.<p>Also, the phone graphics on your homepage are copied directly from the TextMarks site!
This is a hot space, note that Gartner just released a list of the top 10 consumer mobile applications for 2012 and Money Transfer via SMS is #1: <a href="http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1230413" rel="nofollow">http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1230413</a>
first impression - how flexible is the input syntax? as a user, i'd be mad if i thought i typed in something syntactically correct (e.g., "venmo $5 to bob for lunch") but there was actually a syntax error and my transaction didn't go through
This is almost exactly how Paypal started - except they 'beamed' it over instead of using SMS.<p>Eventually they realized that people were much more interested in using their website to transfer money, hence what we have today..
Nicely done interface. A minor nitpick, if you send SMS to 646-863-9557, shouldn't the second screen have a different phone number?
Or does all of the interaction you show there happens on the person sending the money?
what happens if someone picks up your phone and writes
venmo $100 to 555-123-4567 for hack. 555-123-4567 being their number? how can you issue a refund or deal with issues like this?
Word.<p>1. I am confused if I text a shortcode, or if I have to text that 646 bullshit?<p>2. I should be able to click on step 1/step2/step3 in your animation in case I want to review the information contained in that slide a little longer.<p>3. You have to be EXPLICIT about fees on the front page.
great idea, very clever. i posted this to pikk: Thrive or Fail? Send And Receive Credit Card Payments Through SMS Text Messages [VOTE] - <a href="http://www.pikk.com/297fd" rel="nofollow">http://www.pikk.com/297fd</a>