Snapchat announced its move into mobile payments with Snapcash. The service enabled users to send money directly to each other. They just needed to set up their financial information first in the app before they could get started with Snapcash. The service itself was powered by Square. It appears that the company will now be forfeiting to Venmo as it’s reportedly going to shut down Snapcash next month.
TechCrunch points to code buried in Snapchat’s Android app which mentions a “Snapcash deprecation message.” The message will be meant to inform users that “Snapcash will no longer be available after %s [date].”
It’s possible that the feature may not have seen wide usage since there are already a wide variety of services that users can use to pay back their friends for that drink or meal. The list includes Venmo. Square Cash, and PayPal.
When the scribe presented the code to Snapchat, a spokesperson for the company confirmed that “Yes, we’re discontinuing the Snapcash feature as of August 30, 2018. Snapcash was our first product created in partnership with another company – Square. We’re thankful for all the Snapchatters who used Snapcash for the last four years and for Square’s partnership!.”
The spokesperson added that the company will be notifying all users about this in-app as well as through the support website soon.