Square Cash, Apple Pay Cash, or Venmo?

[Acadie]

Dd18 is leaving for college this week, so I'd like to get us on the same cash transfer app. I think most college students use Venmo, but don't like what I read in this article about their security, especially that even if you set up all security protections the other party in the transaction can retroactively make the transaction public.

https://www.wired.com/story/venmo-alternatives/

Square Cash sounds better as long as you don't need rush transactions, which involve a fee, but are any college students using it? And Apple Pay Cash wouldn't work for transactions with Android users....

Would love to hear thoughts on various options in terms of security and usability for a college student. 

[Ali in OR]

My college kid uses Venmo. And it's one of those things that she knows how to do and I don't. If I need to get her money, I can do that online from my bank account to hers (I used to reimburse her ubers from the airport to school back when there was going to school...)

[Pawz4me]

DS24 and DH use Venmo all the time. They've never had a problem. I love Apple Pay, but I've only used it in stores and gas stations. I don't know how it works person to person.

[Scarlett]

I have used the cash app for family, but yes I agree it is not good for a rush situation.  For ds20 and dss19 we have always just transferred money to their accounts.  It is instant.  

[Corraleno]

DS and his college friends only use Venmo. I have no idea how it works, so if I need to get money to him, I just transfer it to his bank account (we have the same bank) and its available instantly.

[Amy in NH]

I set up a joint checking account between my college student and myself at my regular bank which made for easy online, fee-free, transfers of money from my other accounts. 
Student had a debit card to use to access the cash I transferred.

[Tree Frog]

My dd's both use Venmo. It's really easy to transfer money for shared utilities or if you need to repay someone. There are some features I don't much care for, but I've used it attached to my cc. I'm planning to attach it to a savings account at a different bank than our regular one.

[Storygirl]

DD18 and DH both have Venmo, but if we needed to transfer money to her, we would just put it right in her bank account, which is linked to ours. I also made sure she had some cash on hand -- I gave her $50, and she had some of her own, as well -- and told her to put $10 in her backpack, $10 in her lanyard, $20 with her checkbook (hidden), etc., so that if she loses part of it, she will still have the rest.

DD also has a debit card attached to her own account and is an authorized user on one of our credit cards, so she could go to a grocery store, make a purchase, and request cash back, if needed, using one of the cards.

So she has a lot of options.

[sassenach]

That age group is going to mostly use Venmo.

[catz]

My college student and our younger adult music teacher use Venmo.  

[Forget-Me-Not]

I use Venmo to pay my hairdresser and that’s it lol. But it is easy and convenient. 
 

Another thought—have you considered adding her as an authorized user to one of your CCs? We added my teen son to one when he got his DL and it’s so convenient. I never have to worry about whether he has enough money for gas or food. He put it in his smartphone wallet so he can use Android Pay and order food thru apps.  He’s super responsible and trustworthy with it and usually asks permission before randomly buying stuff. 

[Acadie]

1 hour ago, Forget-Me-Not said:

Another thought—have you considered adding her as an authorized user to one of your CCs? We added my teen son to one when he got his DL and it’s so convenient. I never have to worry about whether he has enough money for gas or food. He put it in his smartphone wallet so he can use Android Pay and order food thru apps.  He’s super responsible and trustworthy with it and usually asks permission before randomly buying stuff. 

 

She's entirely trustworthy and I have zero concerns that she would spend beyond any parameters we set.

She doesn't have much practice keeping track of a wallet, though, and I'm a little afraid she might lose our card, with all the hassles that entails. Her high school was this weirdly safe bubble where students would leave computers, phones and wallets out everywhere and nothing was ever stolen. Even though she knows the rest of the world is different it's not habitual for her yet to keep track of valuables all the time.

I'm thinking a debit card with a limited balance might be a good way to start.

[Forget-Me-Not]

17 hours ago, Acadie said:

I'm thinking a debit card with a limited balance might be a good way to start.

IME, it’s much, much easier to recover losses from a lost/stolen credit card than a debit. I had someone get ahold of my debit card number a few years back and set up a bunch of dating site profiles. It took my bank a couple of weeks to return the money, and we bank with B of A, so it’s not like we were dealing with some local community bank. OTOH, the few times I’ve had fraudulent charges on my CC, usually the CC catches it before it ever goes through and they can reverse the charges immediately. 

17 hours ago, WendyAndMilo said:

If you have Chase or Wells Fargo, they both use Zelle to transfer money into checking accounts.  

 
So does Bank of America. 

[Ali in OR]

My dd has a secured credit card--our credit union basically holds $500 of hers and that's her limit on her card. If you do that, get automatic bill pay. Dd was potentially ruining her credit score just not paying attention that she had a bill to pay! And it's always a pretty small amount for her.

[KungFuPanda]

We did Venmo when dd was in college.  I liked that the transaction was instant. It was also how the kids paid each other when one got the pizza or whatever.  I'm not sure why your kid would bother to ever change a private transaction to public.  I stands to reason that if they want free money they won't annoy the person giving it to them.  Even public transactions don't contain any account information.  They generally look like this:

"Mommy paid Kid $30 for🍗 🍇 🍕"

I had fun with it and would put silly stuff in the record like "Mom paid Kid $30 for nugs not drugs" or something equally groan worthy.  I once billed her hundreds of thousands of dollars for raising her, but she refused the charges.