Plato: Critiquing Venmo

My critique of Venmo, which is an app that allows users to transfer money to their friends, will follow the four points that seem to be most salient to our discussion, which are:

1. Unifying theme
2. Inclusion of everyone
3. Enticing opportunity for open discussion
4. Ease of understanding

First, Venmo is well unified because everything on the app is included because it facilitates transferring money form one person to another in a timely fashion. The sidebar allows you to search for people who owe you money, or to whom you owe money and can be linked to Facebook to find which of your friends owe you money. It has an option to see pending payments, to change your profile settings (so your friends can recognize you and know that you are who they're actually sending money to), and has an option to cash out when your friends pay you. The home feed lets you see transactions your friends make, and even gives you the opportunity to like and comment on them.

Second, Venmo makes it reasonably easy to include everyone. I had some difficulties setting up my profile when it came to linking to my checking account, since I use a really small credit union which wasn't listed on the app. So it took a while and some trial and error to validate my account. But once I had it up and running, it became very easy to make transactions.

Third, as Venmo is designed to allow people to pay each other, there isn't much discussion that's really necessary besides telling someone to pay you what they owe you or you'll send Frankie over to break their legs . . . just kidding. But the interface is in place for conversations to happen. I think that as Venmo gets bigger, they hope to promote events on their app that people can buy tickets to and split the cost, or something of that nature. They're not even a year old, so they're still in the very basic stages of what they could be.

Fourth, while Venmo is relatively new, their interface is still very slick, easy to understand, and professional-looking. These are all qualities that inspire confidence, which is a necessity considering they're dealing with peoples' money.