I got an invitation to sign up for this service from a friend and was curious if anyone has used it. It seems similar to paypal but without fees. It could be a great way for us to pay eachother without getting nailed with paypal fees on either end. It is only set up for individuals and not businesses for now. I haven't used it yet, but just seeing if anyone here has and your thoughts. https://venmo.com/get-started
May look into this as a viable option now that Paypal has decided to start withholding payments from us until we make shipments of products via their site to prove we actually send them. Nevermind that we have consistently shipped purchases within 24 hours, but usually less at beyond reasonable shipping costs... Paypal is putting our money in limbo until the item ships, maybe even until the item is received, though I don't know how they will be able to do that. Bottom line is that I don't even know if what they're doing is legal. Both eBay and Paypal are still taking their fees out of the balance, but not making those funds available to us. Furthermore, if using their shipping service and you don't have the balance readily available in your account, they charge even more fees. It's fucking ludicrous.
My friend's brother use to work for the company and consequently she forced a lot of her friends to use it. I never wound up using it personally but got to watch it in action. It seemed the most useful in the pre-everyone-having-a-smartphone era because you could send money easily via text message. My friend was also saying that it's a pretty popular form of payment in developing countries because it doesn't require an internet connection/computer. Anyway, as far as I know it was a convenient way for her friends to pay rent to her and split meals, but on the other hand, aside from not having fees, I don't see how it's particularly more useful than gifting on paypal. Also, if you bank with Chase, they have a really simple person-to-person transfer system that my gf and I use to send each other money for rent.
