The landscape of applications for sending money and making payments is quite diverse and users have increased in recent years.
For 2019, the Pew Research Center estimates that the vast majority of adults in the United States have some type of mobile phone and 81% of Americans own this type of device, compared to 2011, when according to a survey of this only 35% of adults had cell phones.
The spread of the internet and the massive use of digital media have made these types of applications appear more and more and consumers are increasingly willing to get rid of their plastic cards to move their transactions to phones.
The multibillion-dollar digital wallet market is estimated to reach $ 400 billion in annual flows by 2022 in the United States alone, according to an outlook from consulting firm McKinsey in its “Global Payments 2018” report, published in October last year.
“Mobile commerce, including in-app payments and mobile browser payments, is the dominant factor driving the strong growth of digital commerce, due to the increasing adoption of smartphones, a growing shift towards online shopping and improvements in network bandwidth ”, adds the report.
Person-to-person payments through mobile applications have a higher level of penetration, especially in young people between 18 and 34 years old (33%), and in adults between 35 and 54 years old (24%) in the United States, according to the McKinsey report.
These are some of the most popular applications for money transfers to family and friends.
Venmo
It’s a paid service that has been gaining a following in recent years, mostly from people who use it to pay their friends.
This app that makes it easy to pay between people was launched in 2009 and is especially popular with millennials who use it to pay rent, split a dinner bill, pay rent to your roommate, or buy groceries. Uber also added it as a payment option last year.
Setup is straightforward – users enter their information into the app and receive a text message to confirm. If they connect the service with their Facebook account, they can search for their friends and click on their names to send money via text messages.
Venmo was acquired by Braintree in 2012 and handled $ 208 million in transactions in 2017. The maximum amount you can send is $ 2,000 per week with a bank account and $ 2,000 per month with a credit card.
To use it you simply have to enter the amount you want to pay, choose a person (you can enter their name, phone number or email), detail the amount in dollars and click on “pay”. If your friend doesn’t have a Venmo account, they’ll get a message suggesting they set one up to get their cash.
Venmo does not charge for basic services like sending money from a linked bank account, debit card, or your Venmo balance. Nor for receiving or withdrawing money from your Venmo account or using the standard transfer service to your bank account. It also doesn’t have monthly or yearly fees, but it does have fees for premium features like ATM withdrawals from banks outside of the app’s networks.
Zelle
Formerly known as clearXchange, this app offers free person-to-person payments. The service, for Android and iOS users, is backed by more than 30 US banks and is a direct rival to other applications such as Venmo, Apple Pay and Square Cash.
What makes Zelle different? On the one hand, convenience. You don’t actually have to sign up to use the service and enter your bank account information, and then make sure all your friends and family do too. Probably most of the people you know already have access to this app because it is configured to work with bank accounts such as Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo. See here the list of all Zelle partner banks.
Banking apps or websites have traditionally allowed money transfers in various ways, but they often require you to provide them with the account information of the person you want to send money to. Sometimes both parties required registration, and in some cases transactions could take a couple of days. Also, it wasn’t always an option if you didn’t share the same bank.
With Zelle, you can transfer funds from your checking account to someone else’s in minutes. All you need is that person’s email address or phone number. Zelle will automatically send that person a text or email with a link that says they have a payment waiting for them. All you need to do is accept. You can also request funds from someone else.
Apple Pay Cash
With this service, users can send money to other Apple users through the application built into iMessage, the default messaging application on Apple mobile devices.
With Apple Pay Cash you can send money from the debit or credit card stored in Apple Wallet, and a digital debit card will be deposited into the recipient’s Apple Pay Cash account.
This service complements others such as Apple Pay for transactions in the App Store and in retail stores that accept the mobile payment function.
Like Venmo, with this app you can transfer the money to your bank, or simply store it in your Apple Pay Cash account for future Apple Pay purchases.
PayPal
Since 2011, the electronic payment company allows you to send money to your friends through Facebook.
With the application called simply “Send money” you have the option to send money from one to another friend. To use the service you only need to have the email address of the other person. If the recipient of the money does not have a PayPal account, they can create an account after receiving the message.
The application allows you to send and get money from your friends in a few minutes. The app is very useful for things like collecting, reimbursing a friend for paying for your lunch, or splitting the bill.
TransferWise
This application helps its users avoid high costs when transferring their funds to other countries and does so by allowing their clients to wire the money to a TransferWise bank account in their home country. The startup then draws the same amount from its local account and pays it to a second country of the user’s preference.
By 2017, when it activated the option to make payments through Facebook, more than a million users transferred nearly a billion dollars each month with this application, which is based in London. The tech startup has venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and Virgin founder Richard Branson as investors and was valued at the time at an estimated $ 1.1 billion.
For two years, this application can make money transfers between the United States, Canada, Australia and the European Union, however earlier this year, the money transfer company said it would limit money transfers to $ 12,849 within or outside the UK due to exchange rate volatility caused by Brexit instability.
Square Cash
Square was launched in 2009 with the goal of allowing anyone with a mobile device to process credit card payments. The payment method has become especially popular with small businesses, such as street food stalls and boutique coffee shops. Square, an app created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, was used by about 2 million merchants for 2017.
Users do not need to register to use Square Cash. Someone can simply email the recipient, with [email protected] in the CC space and the payment amount as the subject line of the message.
The user will receive an email asking them to link a credit card to their account. The recipient enters a debit card number once and will have that account associated with their email afterward.
In addition to email, there is a Square Cash app for iOS and Android devices.
Square currently charges 2.6% of the transaction cost plus a 10 cent fee.
YellowPapper
This company is a pioneer in digital payment services in Latin America. It was founded in 2004 and currently provides services in several countries in the region such as Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
According to its website, YellowPapper received the World Bank’s “first” equity investment for a Latin American mobile finance company.
The application supports remittances and transfers between people by integrating users’ bank accounts into the platform.
To date, it has registered 6.6 million unique users per month, 480 million transactions per year, operating in six countries and partner banks such as CitiBank, ScotiaBank, HSBC, Banco Azteca, Davivienda, Grupo Aval, Colpatria, Banco Pichincha, CorpBanca, Bancoomeva, and allies such as VISA, MasterCard, Movistar, among others.
Movii
This platform created by Colombians, and which currently works only in Colombia, has the same principle as the aforementioned applications, and among its objectives is to share or transfer money to friends.
Through the application you can “Send money” between Movii users, entering the cell phone number of the user to whom you want to send the money, digital the value to send.
Movii offers services such as payment for services or digital content (if you don’t have a conventional credit card), paying bills, recharging cell phones and sending money between friends. You can withdraw the money in allied points, a service that will have a fee of less than a dollar.