Snapchat Allows Users To Send Money, Calls It Snapcash – Even Has A Cheesy Video Introducing The Concept
Snapchat has always promised (but hasn’t always delivered) you the highest level of privacy by offering a system where messages self-destruct within moments of them being viewed. Evidently, the company has devised a way to let your money disappear from your account, too. Calling it Snapcash, Snapchat now offers its users a way to send and receive cash in the same app’s ecosystem.
Beginning this week, the mobile messaging company will make sending money as easy as its ephemeral text messaging system. Fortunately, the money will be sent and not destroyed. The messaging company has tied up with payments startup Square to enable its chat app to act as a money transfer system. The company’s app has made it extremely easy to send money as it has been updated to recognize the dollar sign typed into the messaging field as an intention to send money. The company has even released a weird ad to highlight the service, reported Business Insider.
Once the dollar sign is entered, the “send message” transforms into a green button that will extract money from a connected debit card and send it via the app’s backend to the intended recipient. However, all the behind-the-scene action is being handled by Square and it this is partner that will store the card’s number and handle the transaction.
Though it was elementary that messaging apps will evolve to handle peer-to-peer payments, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel said that he doesn’t see his company competing with the likes of PayPal or Venmo, reported Re/code. Incidentally, the mobile based payments market is getting the much-needed attention from all the major players, but few have come up with a comprehensive ecosystem and even fewer have managed to get their users to adopt the newer system of sending and receiving payments.
Surprisingly, Snapchat hasn’t started charging a fee or commission to use the system but the company is competing with the likes of Facebook who, in all likelihood, may soon merge messaging and payments in the near future. Perhaps by not charging a single cent to send and receive money, Snapchat is hoping to get much-needed traction for the service. Fortunately, the three-year old nascent company has just figured out a way to generate revenue.
Snapcash is powered entirely by Square Cash, which is Square’s standalone platform that allows users to send and receive money via a simple email. Hence, people who are signing up for Snapcash are essentially getting onboard the Square Cash train. In other words, people will be indirectly signing up for a Square Cash account when they opt for Snapcash.
The Snapcash endeavor might just fly owing to the sheer popularity of the messaging service. Thousands of users directly offer up a huge customer base which interacts with the platform on a daily basis and hence may slowly warm up to the concept of sending money via a chat app.
[Image Credit | Next Power Up]
