Venmo faint rining sound

In college, I used Venmo a lot. It was a great way to split payments between friends or collect money for rent. As I’ve gotten older, especially since the pandemic, I find I use it less than ever. Probably used the app once in the last year.

When I was a more regular user, I noticed different types of user behaviors. There are essentially two types of people who use Venmo. People who pay back immediately, and others who will wait until they have to pay you back (usually under some sort of duress).

The second type of user is, in a word, annoying. Why can’t they just complete the payment? There is a feature where you can “remind” someone to pay you back, but it just sends a notification. Unfortunately, some people need more than a gentle nudge.

What if there was a more aggressive way to chase down outstanding payments? One could imagine a paid service where “enforcers” hunt down the person, but the cost of this is too high. What if we used the features already on the device? For example, you could force the person’s phone to persistently pay a high-pitched ringing sound that gets louder and louder until they pay you back. Yes, this is maniacal, but it would almost definitely result in a higher number of payments completed.

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