Peer-to-peer payments have become mainstream in the last few years, thanks to services like Apple Pay Cash, Google Pay, and Venmo. However, its increasing popularity has led to increased competition and one of its first victims, as Snapchat maker Snap has announced it will be shutting down its own peer-to-peer payments service, Snapcash.
Snapchat will abandon the peer-to-peer payment space on August 30th. Code buried in Snapchat’s Android app includes a “Snapcash deprecation message” that displays “Snapcash will no longer be available after %s [date]”. Shutting down the feature will bring an end to Snapchat’s four-year partnership with Square to power the feature for sending people money.
With competing services from Apple, PayPal, Google, and others, there were no lack of ways to pay friends for your part of the dinner bill, or a quick loan. The fact that those payment options are backed by well-known, established companies may have also hurt Snapcash.
Another factor leading to Snapcash’s shutdown could be its popularity among adult performers to receive payment for nude shots.
Meanwhile, a quick Twitter search for “Snapcash” surfaced plenty of offers of erotic content in exchange for payments through the feature. It may have been safer for Snapchat to ditch Snapcash than risk PR problems over its misuse.
A Snapchat spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the company’s payments service would be shutting down:
“Yes, we’re discontinuing the Snapcash feature as of August 30, 2018. Snapcash was our first product created in partnership with another company – Square. We’re thankful for all the Snapchatters who used Snapcash for the last four years and for Square’s partnership!” The spokesperson noted that users would be notified in-app and through the support site soon.
(Via 9to5Mac)
