How has Venmo Changed the World?
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As college students and young adults, we don't carry cash with us. If we do, then it is probably less than $20. There is no need for cash for us anymore because we have many different forms to pay without using cash, such as using our debit cards, Apple pay and now there is Venmo. Venmo has changed the way we look at how we are spending money. Venmo is an app that is free and it is very simple to use. You are able to hook up your bank account to Venmo and your friends are able to send you money and vice versa. An example would be if you and a friend were out to dinner and you forgot your wallet. You are able to pull out your phone, search your friend on Venmo and type in the amount of money you want to send them. With one click they are able to have it in their "Venmo balance." From that point, the friend is either able to direct deposit the money right into their bank account immediately for a slight charge, or they are able to deposit it into their account for free, but it will take three to five business days. So how did this all start?
Two college students, Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail were students at the University of Pennsylvania. The early stages of how Venmo came to be was that they both went to a concert for a weekend and one of them forgot their wallet; for the whole weekend only one person was paying for the trip and by the end the person who forgot their wallet had to write a check. They were thinking that there must be a much simpler way to send each other money.
Today in class we learned about Roger's Diffusion of Innovations and our example that we used was cable television. There were five major sections that we broke up the idea into that was part of a bell curve and those were: Pioneers/ Innovators, Early adaptors, Early majority, Late adaptors and Laggards. I have been able to break down how Venmo was created in these stages.
Pioneers and Innovators
Kortina and Magdon-Ismail were the first two to come up with the idea. In 2009 they came up with a system by paying over text and just writing their name and how much money they are giving. They soon realized that they needed to distinguish what each payment was for, so they would write one or two words to go along with it. This would later adapt into emoji's. In 2010, they raised $1.2 million seed money through financing round
Early Adapters
In 2012, Braintech which is a fintech payment company aquired them because they were able to see their potential. The app also opened to the public in 2012 and after their final quarter of that year, the app had $59 million of mobile transactions.
Early Majority
By 2013, the first quarter processed $81 million and Braintech was acquired by PayPal for $800 million.
Late Adaptors
In 2017, they have processed $8 billion and it keeps growing from there.
I have not listed the Laggards part of the bell curve because I believe that Venmo will continue to rise for a while until something new and better comes up and so far there isn't one yet. Venmo has truly changed the way people go out to eat and go shopping in general and it has changed for the better by making people's lives easier.
Sources down below:
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