Venmo Essay

Since the beginning of the Internet, people have become indulged with its many functions, from making advanced programs to learning how to do new projects to social media. Social media has evolved over the years since the late 1990s and, ultimately, people have incorporated it into their lives. It is the modern way for people to connect and communicate with anyone across the globe. Plus, social media is everywhere; people utilize it when they are on the bus, at the checkout line, and even when they are using the restroom. In Peggy Orenstein’s “The Way We Live Now: I Tweet, Therefore I Am,” she propounds that social media has altered society. Social media has changed society’s priorities, characteristics, and mentality.

In a society where technology has already advanced significantly, innovation and growth further encompass those who accept the opportunity of change. This is prevalent with the new progression of the traditional banking system. The previously established banking process involved multiple tangible items - credit cards, checkbooks, and cash. This all has changed drastically within the past 10 years with the development of mobile banking. Mobile banking incorporates web-based transactions and abilities, mobile payments, and other financial relations all-stemming from a mobile device. It has become widespread due to the accessibility, ease, and the number of users continually joining the mobile banking movement. Not only have the United States and Canada been affected, but mobile banking and payments are becoming an international norm. Great progress has positively impacted many banking institutions; however, concerns of security and personal privacy have halted its implementation among the US population. Though it can be viewed as a broad topic, mobile banking is portrayed through its changes and advancements with mobile payments, network effects, overall international influences, market landscape, and mixed perceptions of security within the model.

The current President of the United States, Barack Obama, has been a particularly modern president, using social media in many ways to bolster his political agenda and even setting a few online records along the way1. He utilizes social media to not only seem more modern and knowledgeable of current technology, but as a gateway to reach more people through appeals to his audience’s pathos and ethos. He garners public support and gives out specific information2 through his new, ‘personal’ twitter3, therefore we will focus mostly on that account. In the 21st century, it is incredibly important to understand the close relationship between social media and rhetoric.

Mobile banking changed the landscape of personal banking. As the Internet became more ubiquitous and smartphone and tablet use is increasing, the desire for consumers to conduct their banking on the go grew exponentially. Financial institutions are expanding the services offered through mobile banking to attract younger customers as well as reduce costs. In an effort to reduce costs, banks are investing in technologies to change the banking landscape with do-it-yourself banking, teleconferencing with customers, eliminating paper, and reducing branch size.

Writing on the Wall by Tom Standage focuses on different forms of social media and how it has changed to benefit society throughout the past 2,000 years. Standage defines social media as a community that is brought together by shared information and passed along to different social connections. Social media may not have been in the same form as we are used to nowadays, but it has been around for centuries. In some ways, you may not realize that daily activities are forms of spreading information. People like the idea of social media because as humans, we like interacting with other people. Throughout the years, we’ve learned how to transition from oral communication to a written language. The discoveries changed how people view communication for the better.

Venmo provides a non-confrontational method for friends to reimburse and pay one another when more often people do not carry cash. Moreover, if a friend “forgets” or “I have no cash” to pay what s/he owes, you do not have to resort to the awkward, perhaps old-fashioned, step of asking for the money. Venmo’s “request” button will do the job for you, that can be a new social norm. Along with the ease of use comes a significant problem due to a misunderstanding about how Venmo works. Many users could easily think Venmo cash transfers happen instantly when in fact it does not. This is crucial because people appear to be using Venmo to transact business with strangers not just to split dinner checks and rent payments with friends.

Any individual who even merely observes the society in which humans participate in today has the capability of noting how almost every aspect of life revolves around social media. Unfortunately, the growth of the era typography into the era of telegraphy and the internet has only enabled the phenomenon of a digital life to flourish and revolutionize daily life. This lifestyle receives an inconceivable amount of contempt due to its stereotype of disengaging individuals from their surroundings, but not many people consider how society may benefit from a media-saturated environment. Of course, not dissimilar to other aspects of life, a person involved with media-communication will reap what they sow, and therefore each individual’s success relies

. Mobile payment users >190 MM in2012, which is over3 % of total mobile users worldwide a level considered as "mainstream”

The Harvard Business School case study Mobile Banking for the Unbanked explores two very different examples of mobile financial service models:

In January 2014, SmoothPay was first launched in Toronto, Ontario offering mobile payments with integrated functions such as customizable loyalty programs and solutions. In addition, this company’s network has reached over 5,000 users and 100 merchants in their well connected partnerships and community in less than two years. Despite this achievement, only a low percentage of consumers are using their smartphones to make their daily purchases across Canada creating difficulty in further promoting SmoothPay’s business. However, SmoothPay has focused in highly populated areas, such as universities. Therefore, this strategic decision has increased some brand awareness. Since this product let consumers to easily connect with their payment accounts, such as Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal, many have benefited from using SmoothPay’s quick and

Since the late nineties, there has been a growing sector of online companies that sell merchandise or other products, known as e-tailers. This growing market, as a result, has driven demand for another type of company that is able to safely and securely process payments and business transactions between buyers and sellers. The growth in the online industry has spurred all types of opportunities for payment service providers like PayPal. There are a variety of competitors that have entered the market, such as Amazon payments and Stripe. However, PayPal has used it’s first-mover advantage and this has allowed them to make their service synonymous with online purchases and payment processing. This brand name and reputation alone has given them the ability to position themselves in the market in order to sustain their business long term. This paper will focus on how the idea of PayPal was developed, grew into a massive e-business with over 179 million active users, and changed the way people pay online.

Digital payments allow for services to be delivered at lower costs, afford greater scalability and greater ease of access. This

However, with rapid development of mobile technologies and communication mobile payment quickly gains its popularity. People seek faster, safer and more convenient way to pay their bills. And mobile payment gives customers all of that. Even though the buzz around mobile payments coinside in time with Apple Pay introduction, momentum for mobile payment technologies was building even before Apple Pay debuted last fall. Some 17 percent of all smartphone users reported making a point-of-sale payment with their phone in 2013, up from 6 percent in 2012, according to a U.S. Federal Reserve survey. In-person mobile payments in the United States more than doubled in 2014, to $3.7 billion. (Hof, 2015)

According to the most recent Federal Reserve study; most of us haven’t set foot in a banking hall in ages. It is a lost battle to banks that opt to use traditional methods to conduct their banking transactions (Gup 2003). By December of last year, close to half of all smartphone users in the United States had transacted some or all of their banking on their phones and iPhones. In the United Kingdom alone, rates of mobile banking transactions doubled over the course of a single year (Scn Education 2001). A banking business that invests in this type of technology gets assured of increasing their customer base.

The last decade has witnessed a lot of growth of mobile communication devices and wireless technologies across the globe. This has led to a change in the way many activities are conducted and opened the way for m-commerce, which is e-commerce's next evolutionary stage. The significant power of m-commerce is primarily as a result of the ability to connect wireless devices anytime, anywhere (The Future of Mobile Payment Systems : Rise of the Mobile Wallet 2012-2017 [Electronic version], 2011).