Payments

Facebook Goes After Your Coins on Messenger

Posted by The Virtual Skinny on in Culture, Money 0 Comment

And By ‘Coins,’ We Mean Money Transfers on Messenger 

Facebook Messenger just thought of a new way to remind you when you owe someone money. According to the The Verge, the social network is testing out what we’re calling a new ‘pay back feature.’

messenger

Here’s how it works: Let’s say you’re chatting with your friend about a recent night out. During the convo, someone drops words like ‘IOU’ or ‘ you owe me.’ Facebook’s feature with the help of chat assist and machine learning will pick up on those words or similar phrases.  The feature will then prompt you or your friend to make a payment right then and there.  While the feature does this automatically, it’s up to each party to decide whether they want to settle their debts right there on Messenger or keep their ‘IOU’ status a bit longer.

Just another sign that Facebook’s trying to get deep into the payments game. The company didn’t stop there. It’s also introduced group chat polling to help planning nights out with friends a bit easier.  Turn all the way up tonight or do something more chill and low-key? That could be the question.

U.S. Facebook users are in luck because both features are only available Stateside – for now.

What do you think? Good move by FB or completely unnecessary? Tell us what you think in the comments or take our poll!

Virtual Skinny: Friday Fave

Posted by The Virtual Skinny on in Internet & Tech, Newsletter 0 Comment

5.13.2016

Good to Know: Want to delete your fave dating app? Just deleting the app from your phone won’t do the trick. Take these steps to delete your profile and avoid any awkward encounters or questions.

delete

THE SKINNY

When It’s The Same Story, Different Source … 

Facebook is having one of the worst weeks ever. More info has leaked about its editorial team and “Trending Topics” section. This time it’s courtesy of The Guardian.

When It’s More Of The Same … 

The Guardian obtained a leaked internal document intended to give FB’s editorial staff guidelines on how to determine what news is trending and what’s not. The docs confirms things that we’ve already heard. FB’s new team relied on 10 major new sources, staff can “inject” a story into Trending Topics even if it actually isn’t trending on the network, and new stories about FB are kind of off limits. A couple of things here: (1) FB’s VP Tom Stocky said earlier this week that the company does not “insert stories artificially” and (2) FB leads users to believe the stories are picked by algorithms, but there’s actually quite a bit of human involvement.  Hmmm … Whoops!

When It’s Time to Deny, Deny, Deny … 

FB responded and said that the Guardian’s doc is out of date and isn’t the current practices of the company.  FB’s VP of Global Operations Justin Osofsky responded with an official blog post of how “Trending Topics” actually works. He says the team relies on 1,000 new sources (not just 10). Osofsky says the team also uses an RSS web crawler to I.D. hot topics. And, he says that FB’s not about suppressing political views even if they are conservative.

When You Don’t Want No F&^#@! Problems …

Mark Zuckerberg is in full on damage control. He put out a lengthy FB status about the situation. He says the company is investigating the matter but has not found any wrongdoing yet. Also, he wants to pow-wow with conservatives and others to put this whole thing to bed. 

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON? 

When Amazon Isn’t Your Fave … 

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is not a fan of Amazon.  He thinks the company has a “huge antitrust problem.” It all comes down to the fact that Amazon’s Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post (WaPo). Trump is under the impression that Bezos is using WaPo to influence politicians and ultimately avoid paying taxes. #Interesting

THE STREETS ARE TALKIN’ 

Pitching your startup to venture capitalists – the latest thing you can do on Snapchat.

Basketball legend Magic Johnson is leaving payment company Square’s board.  Who knew? Johnson’s kicking off his fund for urban development.

Virtual Skinny FinTech Ed: Trending …

Posted by The Virtual Skinny on in FinTech Edition, Newsletter 0 Comment

5.4.2016

Good to Know:  Dr. Craig Wright was trending on social media earlier this week. The Australian entrepreneur claims that his alias is Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of virtual currency bitcoin. Some people are giving him major side eye, but he allegedly has “extraordinary proof.”  Apparently, he’s got receipts.  

receipts

THE SKINNY

When You’ve Moved Onto Something Else …

Dr. Craig Wright had the Interwebs abuzz. But at this week’s Consensus 2016 conference in New York City, execs said yawn. Newsflash: They don’t care about bitcoin.

When You’re TRENDING…

Bitcoin is out. But, the blockchain (bitcoin’s underlying technology aka a huge public ledger that records all bitcoin transactions) is in.

When You’re Not Sure What To Do …

For now, bitcoin as a virtual currency is the only application that works across the globe via the blockchain.  But, we could see other applications popping up as fintech startups and major tech companies like IBM and Microsoft are working on different apps for the blockchain.  How fast these experiments turn into something real comes down to one question: Small scale projects or moonshots? In other words, do companies want to take on a major project all at once or take their time with small-scale stuff?

When You’re Curious …

What’s the better approach? Working on small, achievable applications or taking the risk and shooting for the stars? Tell us in the comments!

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

Keeping It on the D.L…

While many financial peeps gathered this week in NYC, a select group including NASDAQ, Citigroup Inc., Visa Inc., Fidelity, Fiserv Inc., Pfizer Inc., had a pow-wow on the down low back in April.  Yes, there was talk of the blockchain. But, we heard that digital U.S. dollars as an alternative to virtual coins like bitcoin came up too.  Fiserv Inc. even created a digital dollar for show and tell.

SPOTLIGHT

CBS 60 Minutes Lesley Stahl talked fintech on this past Sunday’s episode.  She sat down with John and Patrick Collison, Irish brothers and co-founders of payments company Stripe. The whole point of the company is to allow small businesses to get their online payments from anywhere in the world hassle-free. Check it out here.

LESLEY

QUICK POLL – RUN THOSE NUMBERS …

Young people are into their Venmo app, and the numbers prove it. It’s grown 154 percent from last year.

venmo-quarterly-payment-volume-processed-01

THE STREETS ARE TALKIN’

Young people may heart Venmo, but the U.S. Federal Trade Commission won’t be saying “Venmo, me.”  The agency, which is responsible for making sure businesses are on the up and up with their practices, is looking into the PayPal-owned, peer-to-peer payment service for “unfair and deceptive” practices.  BTW, Venmo would appreciate if U.S. users stayed clear of using words like “Syria” and “Cuba” on Venmo on account of it’s still illegal to send money to those countries.

San Francisco startup Varo Inc. is building mobile banking app complete with deposit accounts, budgeting tools, and other services.  For now, it’s looking to partner with banks but eventually wants to be a bank of its own.  New U.S. bank these days? Don’t see that every day.

Android Pay is now an official payment options for your Uber rides.

ICYMI: 5 FinTech Trends to Watch in 2016

Posted by The Virtual Skinny on in Culture, Money 0 Comment

Originally published on Tech.Co. 

“Financial tech (FinTech) and the payments landscape is changing – and fast. For years, reputable entities such as McKinsey & Co. have documented the industry’s evolution. Recently, in its monthly global payments report, McKinsey determined that the industry will continue its growth after “an extraordinary year in 2014.” If 2014 was an “extraordinary year” for payments, then 2016 will be monumental. There is no better indicator of this than this year’s Money 20/20, an annual financial services conference, held in Las Vegas, NV last week…”

Check out the full article here.