Snapcash is counting its last days, with the actual demise of the peer-to-peer payment system on social network planned on August 30. For those who might still be looking for clues as to what Snapcash is – and that is not quite unusual given how unpopular the particular Snapchat feature has been – Snapcash has been an online payment system that Snapchat users could use to pay or receive cash to or from other friends.
Interestingly, the credit for the revelation goes to an eagle-eyed viewer who came across Snapchat’s Android app codes that showed Snapcash will cease to exist post-August 30. Snapchat also later confirmed the authenticity of the discovery.
The feature again can be considered to be well ahead of its time, having been launched back in 2014. That was a time when such means of payment systems were not quite heard of though unfortunately, being the pioneers here did little to bring Snapcash any glories. And with fewer takers for the same, Snapchat, no wonder, has been eager to wash its hands off of it to save itself from further embarrassment.
One likely reason that many believe led to Snapcash have very few takers is also the very reason that gives Snapchat its unique identity in the social network circles, its self-destructing feature that makes every post to have a very limited shelf life. The same when applied to monetary transactions perhaps made users jittery of it being abused or engage in other frauds by the wong people. No company or brand too seem to have been impressed with Snapcash during the time.
In fact, the Snapcash has already been more in use for conducting unscrupulous or immoral acts than anything else. That again risked the feature defaming Snapchat, bringing it bad name than otherwise. The impending shutting down of the feature will also bring to an end the partnership Snapchat had set up with Square to power the same. The company had described Snapcash as the first feature they set up in collaboration with a third-party organization.
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Meanwhile, other actively dominating the peer-to-peer payment space include PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay and so on. Snapchat too is known to be harboring dreams of using its camera to let users scan product images or barcodes and shop on Amazon. It remains to be seen how Snapchat hopes to pursue that as having its own payment solution would no doubt have provided it a headstart here.
