Snapchat Dances on Money to Unveil New Payment Feature
Snapchat, an unprofitable company "worth" $10 billion, just unveiled a new feature called "Snapcash." It allows teen users send each other money, just like Venmo already does. Snapchat celebrated the feature by dressing actors up in suits with dollar signs and having them dance on showers of cash.
As TechCrunch reports, the new feature isn't anything too exciting:
While Venmo, Google Wallet, and more try to take a business approach to peer-to-peer payments, Snapchat today swooped from the consumer side today by adding a "Snapcash" payments option to its app through a deal with Square Cash. Now you can add a debit card, type a dollar amount into Snapchat's text-chat feature, and hit the green pay button to instantly send a friend money.
But you wouldn't know that from the video, which claims the feature is a "wise investment at any age!" It also declares the service is "secure," despite the fact Snapchat has been the center of multiple hacking scandals in the last year.
Snapchat also used the announcement as an opportunity to switch up their privacy policy. One update warns users that "[Snapchat] can't guarantee that messages will be deleted within a specific timeframe"—a clause that undermines the very ephemerality the service advertises.
The company also added some "common sense" advice to the policy:
Snapchat's new "common sense" privacy advice: "Don’t send messages that you wouldn’t want someone to save or share" https://t.co/vILjyIxoWr
— Tim Bradshaw (@tim) November 17, 2014
Users of social networking services often protest changes to privacy policies. For now, Snapchat seems to be avoiding that fate as users instead focus on cash transfers.
This is a breaking news post and will be updated as more details come forward. To contact the author of this post, please email kevin@valleywag.com.