Venmo

Venmo is dead simple to use, with the QR code scan and effortless options to ask for payments or send them. The number of people who signed up for Venmo also helps - most younger folks are on it.

The social aspect of the software is a bit odd in that I'm not in the least bit interested in what my friends are paying one another for. When people get funny, I suppose it could be entertaining but too much of the feed is people paying each other for rent, groceries and other mundane stuff. Additionally, this present a business challenge where you need to be cautious about posting your purchases if it's a private purchase for your business.

Venmo makes it really easy to send and receive money to friends, family and businesses.

The setup is relatively painless, especially if your bank supports "Plaid" verification (otherwise you will need to manually enter your bank account info and wait a day or two for verification). Venmo also support sending/receiving payment via credit cards or debit cards, but with a 3% processing fee.

In addition, Venmo supports business profiles (as by default, theoretically, your profile is for personal use only).

The absolute biggest downside to Venmo is its questionable privacy policies and settings. By default, all of your transactions are made public, anyone who knows your username can see what transactions you have made (both sending and receiving). You can change these settings, but Venmo makes it unnecessarily difficult - first you need to change your privacy settings to "private," making all of your future transactions private; second you need to make all of your past payments private, as even by changing your settings to "private" this will only affect future transactions. Perhaps more troubling is that Venmo largely hides its privacy policies.

Business profiles are nice, as to make it more "legitimate," but they do come at a cost of 1.9% + 10¢ per transaction. This is fairly typical, but it is always frustrating that the same service is free for personal use but not for business use.

It is quick and simple to use. Finally, but certainly not least, it has a large user base, which means that many of your connections may already be using it. Venmo's success may be attributed in large part to its simplicity of use. There is very little of a learning curve. You may download it and begin sending and receiving money within minutes of installing it. Using Venmo to divide costs is also a breeze since it provides an on-screen calculator when you transfer or request money from someone. You may also send or request the same amount from several people at the same time if you're sharing a bill with a group of people.

Once you've made a payment via Venmo, there is no way to reverse it. The money is sent promptly to the intended recipient. If you need a payment to be refunded, Venmo advises that you contact the receiver and request the money back. Other than that, you may request that Venmo's customer service reverse the payment on your behalf; however, they can only do so if the receiver accepts, if their account is in good shape, and if they still have the cash in the bank.