Snapchat and Square Team Up for Snapcash

Disappearing money may sound like a problem to some. To Snapchat? It’s a feature — one the company is banking on as one more reason users would want to use the ephemeral messaging app.

The feature is called Snapcash, and it’s a collaboration between Snapchat and payments startup Square. As the story goes, Square CEO Jack Dorsey sent $25 to Spiegel through Square Cash approaching that product’s launch back in 2013, and Spiegel told Dorsey that he thought Cash was “genius.” From there, Spiegel began thinking of ways he could build something similar into Snapchat. He enlisted Dorsey to help, and ta-da! Snapcash.

So how does it work? When messaging inside Snapchat, the app looks for mention of a dollar amount in the text box; for example, $5. When an amount is detected, a green button with a dollar sign shows up to the right of that text box. Tapping the green button tells Snapchat that you do, indeed, want to send a payment along with the message. From there, tap send.

Transactions are handled entirely by Square Cash. So when you sign up to enable Snapcash inside the Snapchat app, you’re actually signing up for a Square Cash account, too.

The above fact excites me a great deal. Square Cash is a phenomenal product, but I’m not sure its as widely used as it could be. Square Cash could be on the receiving end of a big bump thanks to this partnership, and on top of that, Re/Code believes that Snapchat could be paying Square a small percentage for every Square Cash transaction.

If Square is making money and increasing its visibility, that’s impressive.

I’m looking forward to playing with Snapcash — unfortunately, the app’s update isn’t available for me yet. Android users should be able to update the app on their devices to access Snapcash today. An update for iOS users is expected soon.

[Source: Re/Code]