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Cash may be going out of style, but transfers are cool

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One way in which other countries have leapfrogged the U.S. technology adoption curve is in the use of mobile phones to move money around.  For example, WeChat and AliPay are huge in China.
Kids These Days now talk about Venmoing money to each other -- Venmo was a startup inspired by other countries' use of phones, then eventually the whole company was bought by Paypal so as to integrate the webservices with the mobile phoen services. Venmo tries to be a social network as well, flaunting (that is, sharing) information about your purchases and discussing them online...strange to me, but evidently rather popular. 
Two other similar services are vying for popular attention in the U.S. now, with intriguing distinct characteristics: Zelle and Cashapp. 
Zelle seems to represent an effort by the Big Banks to obviate the need for Venmo: Zelle is actually more efficient -- transferring immediately and directly from one bank account to another without need to expose any bank information -- but it presumes that each person has a good bank account, while Venmo and Cashapp function as little bank-accounts themselves, with a separate bank account transfer possible but not required.
I assume they make money from the cash that sits idle in each account.

Cashapp (the app formerly known as SquareCash) seems to be newer, and a popular reference with rappers, perhaps because they adopt a great marketing tactic: a #Cashtag as an identifier.  "Just send money to my cashtag"  what a catchy phrase, borrowing from twitter's famous hashtag identifier. Brilliant!   Cashapp also offers flashy gimmicks like direct stock investing and bitcoin purchases.  Indeed, Cashapp is much much cooler than SquareCash.

In sum:  Zelle is closely tied to existing banks, and your bank's app on your phone.  Using it feels more like a bank transaction, and exposing my whole bank account when I simply want to casually request or send a share of my bar bill.   Venmo or Cashapp are better suited for quick quiet transfers in a crowd.   Zelle seems more suited for rent, or larger more official-type payments.

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