Venmo barter option

If you’ve ever attended a bachelor or bachelorette party, you’ve likely experienced the awkward silence after someone makes a huge deposit on an Airbnb. They ask everyone to pay them through Venmo, one person does, and then everyone else suddenly goes radio silent.

I’ve never understood this behavior. You are eventually going to see the person, so why not pay them immediately? Otherwise, you drag out the inevitable and make it awkward in the interim.

Unfortunately, humans are anything but rational. There’s a utopia where everyone pays Venmo requests immediately, but we are far, far from that reality.

This is largely inspired by current events I’m watching play out with loved ones. It got me thinking… what if there was an option to barter instead of paying someone back? You could offer goods or services instead of sending someone the $5 you owe them for coffee.

Unlike a lot of my work, this concept feels like a genuinely good idea. I can see a lot of people getting value from it. You’d need to bake in a lot of other logic to have this make sense, but if you could iron out the kinks it would be a pretty compelling feature. It’s not in Venmo’s interest to facilitate this though, so I doubt it will ever happen.

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