Square Cash Lets You Send Money To Your Friends Via Email
Square, the mobile payment startup, founded by Jack Dorsey announced today that it is launching a new service called Square Cash. The new service, which will be rolling out in the coming weeks, will allow people to easily send money to their friends via email. Sound similar? That’s because it is. In fact, we recently covered a startup called Venmo which has been doing this type of friend-to-friend transactions for over a year. I guess Square wants in on the action.
How does Square Cash work?
It’s actually very simple. According to the Square Cash help page, it works as follows (you have to be a Square user for this to work):
- Draft an email with the recipient’s email address in the “To” field.
- CC pay@square.com.
- Enter a dollar amount in the subject line. For example: “$10”
- Send the email.
It costs $0.50 per transaction to send money, and costs nothing to receive money.
In terms of functionality, Square Cash is not nearly as polished as Venmo (at least not yet), and it doesn’t appear it will be baked into the Square app at the moment, though I expect it probably will be at some point. Plus, Venmo doesn’t charge any transaction fees for payments sent (unless you use a credit card). I think Square Cash still has a way to go to reach Venmo standards, but it’s cool to see the friend-to-friend transaction space starting to heat up.