Attention spans are dwindling, that’s no secret. Reading a newspaper has fallen by the wayside, in favor of reading simple headlines via an app on our phones or tablets. Magazine articles are getting shorter, Vine is offering a way to film videos that last only 7 seconds, and we’ve got devices in our homes that allow us to skip commercials. Everyone remembers the old days of looking at photos; we sat down around a table and passed an envelope of photos, careful not to smudge them with our dirty fingerprints.
Since then, the process has become simplified with the advent of digital photography. We can now briskly look through hundreds of pictures via online storage or our computer’s hard drives. We can snap a quick photo and send it over text or email, and people are instantly able to enjoy the fruits of our creativity. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any easier, Snapchat emerged.
Snapchat arrived on the social media scene, and quickly took it by storm. What they offered was a quick and easy way to send out photos, for a short burst, to anyone in your phone book that has a membership in the app. Operating through your 4G service or Wi-Fi, the app has the ability to take a photo, pick the time limit (3-10 seconds), and send it to your entire circle within seconds. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, they’re now offering a way to exchange money through the app.
How Snapcash works is pretty simple. You add your debit card to the app, thus enabling you to access that card to send money. You enter an amount, click send, and voila! Using the text section of the app, you simply type a $, and the app then recognizes that you’re looking to send some money. A green icon with a dollar sign pops up and the cash is instantly in the account of the recipient. Once they sign up for the app as well, and enter their card information, the money is theirs for the spending within 1-2 business days via deposit through their account.
In the rare instance that your friend doesn’t accept the money or collect on it within 24 hours, the app refunds your money. Via a partnership with existing payment app, Square, Snapcash offers a simple solution to exchanging money without the expensive fees of wire transfers or MoneyGram. While the app has not yet gone international, Snapcash is available in all 50 states to anyone with a valid debit card and over the age of 18.
Snapchat has issued very few restriction regarding what Snapcash will be allowed to cover. While it goes without saying that you cannot use the app to buy illegal substances, weapons, or other dubious items, anything else goes. No, this does mean that you can use the app to charge people to look at your photos, or simply to be friends with you, but otherwise, you’re wide open. Personally, the app is a great way to pay rent when your landlord is slow to cash checks. With Snapcash, the amount is immediately removed from your account, eliminating guesswork and diligent checkbook balancing.
If you want a fun yet still convenient way to send cash, you can type $$$, and this opens the “swipe to send” portion of the app. From there you simply swipe your finger across the screen on the dollar bill that has appeared, until the desired amount has been sent. All cash transactions will be asked for your approval before the funds actually leave your card.
A list of receipts is also immediately available inside the app with the click of a button. This offers the ability to view where your money has gone and ensure that no one has been using the app without your permission. It also assists in balancing your account at the end of the month. There are also safeguards that force the app to have you verify your CVV code before you send any amount of money. There is an initial $250 weekly limit, but through a verification process, that limit can be increased to as much as $2500 per week.
Have you ever been out for dinner, and both you and your dining companion have credit cards and the check is difficult to split? Enter Snapcash, thus making the process much easier. Your friend or you can foot the entire bill, and all of your fellow diners can then pay their share back to you while still seated at the table. Splitting the check has never been easier.
