Cold Hard E-Cash: Friends and Vendors in the Venmo Digital Payments System
Xinyi Zhang
Shiliang Tang
Yun Zhao
Gang Wang
Haitao Zheng
Ben Y. Zhao
Proc. of the 17th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2017)
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Paper Abstract
For millions around the globe, digital payment apps such as Venmo
are replacing cash as the preferred method of payment between
friends and vendors. Apps like Venmo bring a unique blend of
convenience and social interactions into financial transactions. In
this paper, we study the role of social relationships in the adoption
of the Venmo digital payment system. We collect records of
all 91 million public transactions conducted on Venmo since its
introduction, a social graph connecting most of its 10.5 million
users, and analyze the interplay between social relationships and
financial transactions. We find that Venmo communities are very
densely connected compared to other interaction networks, and often
driven by specific niche applications of Venmo. While some
niche communities (rent, utilities, sports betting) exhibit periodic
or ephemeral properties, others are more indicative of real world
social circles. Finally, we find that Venmo's reliance on Facebook
for authentication opens users to potential privacy attacks.