Mobile Payment Service Venmo Shuts Down Instant Money Transfer

Venmo is widely known as one of the leaders in the peer-to-peer (P2P) mobile payments market, thanks in large part to the fact that it was one of very few firms who were even concerned with that business for a while when mobile payments were getting started. Even Apple Pay didn’t have P2P capability in a beta state until November 2017, and this from a service that started just over three years prior. Now, Venmo is shutting down one of its biggest features, if only temporarily, because it needs to make “some changes” to the system.

It wasn’t long ago when Venmo had what it called an instant money transfer system, allowing users to immediately transfer money to a bank account linked to the debit card in a user’s system. A truly modest quarter for a fee made the system run, and most were happy. Venmo, however, noted a need to make some changes, and pulled the feature.

However, the feature didn’t stay pulled for long, reports note. Venmo shut the feature down on Wednesday, and by Thursday, several users had it back in place. No one’s sure just when the feature returns for everybody—or what “changes” were needed in the first place—but until then, Venmo does still offer next-day transfer. Not quite as good, I know, but still not bad.

So this isn’t exactly great news; Venmo took a feature that allowed for ultra-rapid transfer for a relative pittance—a quarter really isn’t that much—and converted it to a more sluggish system. That’s not the direction a company really should take—faster and better should be the goal, not slower and worse—but since some have already had the feature brought back online, the problem here may be comparatively minimal.

Venmo’s move isn’t a good strategy when more companies are starting to discover the payday that’s waiting in P2P mobile payments. Considering how quickly it came back online for some users, though, this may just be a momentary hiccup, righted presently and with minimal damage to the overall proposition. That would be about the best news we could hope for in this situation.