As I said in the same comment, anyone who takes financial transactions seriously (including, presumably, designers of a financial app) would see it as a fundamental flaw. I acknowledge that a lot of people don’t (including, presumably, the designers of this financial app), and this study backs it up.
I suppose it could be a marketing opportunity for them. “Want your financial life to be an open book? Trying to keep up with the Joneses? Use Venmo!”
Splitwise is a better option. Private and permissions-based on a granular basis by default.
I’ve never used it, but wouldn’t the people who are actually part of the transaction get that info anyway? If the ability to see that transactions among groups were fully executed is predicated on having the public option on, this is an even worse feature than I originally thought.
Here’s how the app I mentioned immediately above handles it:
Splitwise is a shared ledger for friends. Expenses you add in Splitwise are not public. Friends who are included on an expense can view that expense, and, if an expense is added in a group, other group members can view expenses shared on Splitwise. You choose who you share your expenses with and what kind of expenses you want to share. Anyone shared on an expense or in a shared group has the ability to edit, delete, and undelete the expenses that have been shared with them.
That’s how I would have assumed Venmo works as well, and I’m apparently not alone in that assumption. It’s nice to know that for every nefarious corporate entity’s tone-deaf and user hostile app there are a few alternatives doing what common sense would dictate. In the end, though it doesn’t seem to matter. Wells Fargo is still a top bank, people shop at Wal-Mart and I pay to use business Gmail.
Oh, I don’t doubt that. It’s the question of getting all the other people to not use Venmo for all the reasons listed in this thread. I mean, they really like posting hamburger emojis. If I were asking for payment for selling mah warez I would make a much bigger fuss. For lunch, it’s not really a big deal. Money transfers to my bank account quickly. It’s dumb but it works.
The thing is that Splitwise is just a ledger, it doesn’t have any actual mechanism for transferring money (or didn’t last I used it, a few years ago). The nice thing about that is that you can settle up however you like. I’ve known people who track shared expenses (splitting lunch, etc) in Splitwise and settle up using Venmo, but you could also use cash.
The other way to do it is to just never settle up - if you have a group that often goes out to lunch together, just track it in Splitwise and the person with the lowest balance always buys for everyone.
