In an age where few people are carrying around cash, peer-to-peer (P2P) payment apps like PayPal, Venmo, Cash App and Zelle make it easy to send and receive money. People are turning to these apps now more than ever before to repay a friend for a dinner bill they covered, or to contribute their portion to the family phone plan.
This level of convenience has led these apps to soar in popularity — “almost three-quarters of U.S. consumers used payment accounts such as PayPal, Venmo and Cash App in 2023, according to the Atlanta Federal Reserve — up from 68% in 2022,” said The Washington Post. People are not just using the apps for one-off expenses either, as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “estimated that payment volume on these apps quadrupled between 2018 and 2022, with usage especially concentrated among younger Americans.”
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1. Sending money to the wrong person
2. Difficulty getting issues resolved
3. No insurance on money stored
4. Limited transparency and oversight
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