Cash Out Fast With New PayPal Feature

PayPal has learned quite a bit from Venmo’s success in recent years, particularly in terms of how many people really like being able to pass money back and forth among friends as opposed to just paying a business for things. With that, PayPal recently rolled out a new pilot program for its peer-to-peer (P2P) lines, including Venmo, that would make actually getting cash from the P2P app that much easier.

The new piloted function is an instant cash-out system, which allows most Visa or Mastercard users to cash out a wallet balance to a bank account in real time, which drops the typical time from around 24 hours to a matter of minutes, up to 30. The downside is that, while normal withdrawals are free, the expedited version will cost. Granted, the rate is just $0.25, and doesn’t seem dependent on amount at all, but going from free to pay will be a blow to some.

While it’s only available to a few right now, reports suggest this will go wide in the next few months, possibly less. With P2P in general on the rise at PayPal—Venmo saw 114 percent growth in 2017’s first quarter, as compared to just 25 percent for PayPal proper—and everywhere else, it’s clear that getting more into the P2P market is vital going forward. Monetizing that is difficult, though, and PayPal’s move to offer a faster withdrawal may be just the way to go forward, a few quarters at a time.

Additional services tend to add value to a service nicely, and encourages users to pay up to take advantage of said services. Granted, there will be some who won’t care and will be willing to keep the quarter by waiting a while longer. There will also be some who get fed up and leave at PayPal’s attempt to effectively hold money hostage for the paltry ransom by fixing a problem it itself caused. For the most part, though, it’s a safe bet that PayPal will find quite a few takers, comparatively few leavers, and very few who revolt outright.

PayPal’s new move will likely be a big boost to the company, and that’s a boost it will need considering how much competition is already in this market.