This article in BankingTech indicates that SnapChat has discontinued its payment function as the lure of money for pictures created a market for adult content, which is a major concern for banks and one of the reasons Zelle doesn’t offer linkages to social networks:
“Snapchat’s peer-to-peer payment add-on, Snapcash, has said that it will discontinue its service on 30 August of this year, as it struggles with competition and PR image, the firm confirmed to TechCrunch.
The Android version of the app includes a line of code that says: “Snapcash will no longer be available after %s [date].”
On the one hand, more popular options like Venmo, PayPal, Zelle, and Square Cash have been eating away at the payments market with more success than Snapchat.
On the other hand, many users were selling adult content of themselves via the platform, which may potentially lead into a PR mess for misuse – it’s bad enough as it is.
There are rumours, however, that the app plans to become an e-commerce platform, as brands are attracted to selling their items through the app, which makes it seamless by storing payment info.
Snapchat seems to resign itself to dissolve the payments feature, as recent lay-offs, difficulty to attract advertisers and the aforementioned bad PR seem to be taking a toll at the firm.”
PayPal had similar problems when users were either too honest or perhaps making bad jokes in the Venmo transaction description. These comments resulted in several investigations by law enforcement. Banks are notoriously risk adverse so I doubt we will see Zelle connected to a social network anytime soon. This of course doesn’t stop the funding of a dubious enterprise it just makes the purpose of the transaction invisible.
Overview by Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group
