CashApp

As unusual as it may sound, many African countries have already replaced cash with phone payments for most regular day-to-day interactions. The same is also true in China, where tech giants AliExpress and WeChat operate rival services, which, when combined, made up over 83 per cent of all payments made in the year 2018. The trend continues to grow year on year, with over 92 per cent of payments made in China’s first-tier cities being made by Wechat Pay or Alipay the same year.

So why have we not seen the same thing happen in the United States and Great Britain? The prevalence of credit and debit cards in most Western countries has meant there hasn’t been the same rush to find a convenient replacement for cash like there was in China and much of Africa. In those countries, vast sections of the population do not have access to banking facilities the same way people in Western countries usually do.

Phone payments have flourished In places where credit/debit cards are unlikely to be accepted, or cash has suffered horrific inflation as it has in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and Kenya. The means to make a payment using nothing more than your phone has been a lifeline for millions of people in these countries.

Some of these people previously had no choice but to travel for hours to find the nearest ATM, or even spend more than a day travelling by bus just to hand over some of the cash they had earned from working in the city to family and friends who still lived in the countryside.

Definition

Although Google Pay and Apple Pay have found favor with some people in developed nations, they are primarily used as a convenient alternative to credit and debit cards. These services require such a card to function, unlike China’s Alipay or M-Pesa in Kenya.

It is these services that CashApp seeks to emulate by facilitating payments between businesses and individuals using nothing more than a phone number, email address, or a unique tag chosen by each user.

CashApp can also use the barcode-like QR codes that have become prevalent throughout much of Western society, which is the fastest and most convenient method of using the service for day-to-day transactions. If you wish to make a payment in a store, for example, you enter the amount you wish to send, and the app will generate a unique barcode that an employee of the store can scan.

In the United States, topping up your CashApp account can be done at Walmart, Walgreens, Rite-Aid, 7-Eleven, or CVS stores. In the United Kingdom, the same service is offered at any retailer with a PayPoint terminal on-site, including most large and small supermarkets, post offices, and many smaller newsagents and convenience stores.

Both of these options are relatively common in their respective countries, but in the West, CashApp is most likely to find use with parents giving pocket money to children, those who don’t want to use their debit or credit card directly at a specific store or website, and other niche or specific scenarios where, for example, you don’t happen to have a bank card on your person.

In all of the above scenarios, the money used to fund CashApp wallets is likely to come from debit or credit cards, and this fact makes it hard for e-wallets to find widespread adoption in Western nations. People are simply already happy using the cards or services they have for most of their day-to-day transactions.

Skrill and Neteller succeeded by targeting the online gambling market directly, but both of those e-wallets have begun to struggle in recent years. Particularly in the United Kingdom, where online gambling websites have been fully regulated for many years, and card transactions can now be made instantly in both directions – is there a need for services such as CashApp in such nations?

CashApp certainly hopes so; They are trying to appeal to everyday users but certainly wouldn’t complain about picking up a share of the lucrative online gambling market as well. They hope to do this by offering lower fees for most types of transactions than Skrill and Neteller and began offering Cryptocurrency services, much like Revolut, in 2018.

History

A little-known fact about CashApp is that it is a side project of Jack Dorsey, most commonly known for creating the Twitter social media app frequently used by media outlets, politicians, and celebrities. The service was previously named Square Cash and has been around in the United States for a long time now; the first version of the software was released for iOS all the way back in 2013.

CashApp quickly expanded onto Google’s Android platform before launching in the United Kingdom the following year. Despite being available for almost a decade, the service is still relatively unknown among the general population, although they have managed to sign up over 36 million unique users.

That’s not bad considering Skrill has been around at least twice as long, is available in 200 countries, and still only has around 40 million unique users. On the other hand, it is dwarfed by PayPal who currently has around 400 million active user accounts – roughly equal to the entire populations of the United States and Great Britain combined.

How to deposit using CashApp

I was sent a referral code for CashApp by a friend some time ago but never bother signing up at the time. Taking another look at the message earlier today, I realized that using this friends code would bag us both a free $10 – not bad simply for signing up, I thought. There was a catch, though (isn’t there always?) as it turns out you don’t receive the free $10 until you have sent $50 using the app first.

After discovering this, I decided to give CashApp a try by depositing at a casino and was amazed at how simple the process was – I wasn’t asked to complete any KYC, send any documents, or take any selfies or videos of myself – nothing at all. I entered the amount I wished to deposit, and a QR code appeared on the screen.

When I scanned this code using CashApp, I was asked where I wanted to fund the payment from, chose my debit card, and that was it – all done in less than a minute.

I can imagine some online casinos being horrified by this situation. I checked the terms and conditions page, and as expected, I found that new customers cannot use either Skrill or Neteller if they wish to claim the new player bonus. CashApp was not mentioned on that same page and has seemingly slipped under the casinos’ radar for the time being.

CashApp may have used another method to confirm my identity, as I’ll admit to not reading every page of the terms and conditions while signing up. I decided to look around the web, where I discovered that my experience was not unusual, and many other users also expressed surprise at not being asked to confirm their identity when creating their new accounts.

I’ve fired off an email to support asking them about this and plan to update this article if and when they respond.

My response from CashApp:

We use several methods to confirm the identity of our users, which are listed in our terms and conditions. You agreed to these conditions using a checkbox while completing our registration procedure on […]. If we change the methods used to confirm your identity, you will be notified via email before such a change comes into effect. […] In your case, I can confirm that your identity was confirmed automatically using the name, address, and date of birth you specified during sign-up. If you have any further questions about this, please do let me know.

Enjoy your day!

How to make a withdrawal using CashApp

Withdrawing using CashApp was just as simple as making my deposit; I was asked to enter my CashApp email address and the amount I wished to withdraw, and that was it – no need to scan a code this time around.

I received an email less than half an hour later telling me that I had received a payment, but I was disappointed to learn that the funds were not immediately available in my CashApp account.

I wondered how long it would take for the payment to clear – when you receive a payment to an e-wallet, it is usually available to spend right away. It seemed especially strange to receive an email telling me about the money and being able to see it in my wallet, but that it was still marked as “pending.”

And thus, a saga began that I definitely had not seen coming. Everything had been so straightforward up until this point. I’m unsure if what follows is indicative of the general user experience of using CashApp, but I feel it is only fair to write about it exactly as it happened.

Trying to spend my CashApp withdrawal

After around two hours of checking my CashApp account and the payment continuing to show as “Pending,” I ended up forgetting about it that day and didn’t check again until the following morning. When I had a look this time, the payment was showing as “Cancelled,” and pressing the “I” button for more information said that the payment had been cancelled/stopped for my protection and to contact the sending party.

The casino didn’t know why this would happen but asked me if I was currently at home. I inquired as to why or what they meant; it was pointed out that I was currently using a VPN. Oops! However, I wasn’t using a VPN when signing up to CashApp as I did this using my mobile phone, and the VPN was running on my computer.

The casino assured me I was not using the VPN when I played the previous day or when I requested the withdrawal, as they log IP addresses on “key events” such as opening a game or requesting a withdrawal. The problem was, the casino had not received the money back yet, so I could not request the withdrawal a second time.

Later that same day, around 3 pm, I logged into the casino again. The funds were now showing in my casino account, so I requested a withdrawal a second time. The same thing happened once again – email received in less than ten minutes, funds appeared in CashApp, withdrawal to bank account was unavailable.

This time I contacted CashApp, who also didn’t seem to know what was going on. Roughly four hours after the payment was received, it was once again cancelled. I was getting frustrated now, mainly because CashApp couldn’t even tell me the reason why they were refusing to accept my winnings “for my own protection.”

I felt I had no choice but to take to the web again, where I found numerous cases of players experiencing the same thing. CashApp’s website had some advice, shown in the screenshot below (Fig. 1):

I ended up having to ask the casino if there was any other way to get my winnings. They use a system known as a “First In First Out Payment Method” to prevent money laundering, and this prevents you from using any other withdrawal method than the one you used to deposit except in particular circumstances. On this occasion, I was allowed to withdraw to my linked bank account, and the funds were available to spend less than half an hour later.

I never could get to the bottom of why I hadn’t been allowed to withdraw via CashApp. I did receive my referral money, which I sent to a friend as a test to find out if that would work. This same friend had no problem receiving or spending the money, and she also used my own referral link to sign up. She sent me her own free $10 when she received it, which I also received without any problems whatsoever.

The casino I was playing at is one of the largest and most trusted in the UK, so I find it hard to believe the problem would be with them. They did tell me they don’t have many customers using CashApp, but that could mean anything – not many to them could mean dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of transactions! My friend successfully deposited and withdrew at a different casino using CashApp, so as the saying goes, “your mileage may vary.”

Fig 1. CashApp’s Information Page regarding Canceled Transactions

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Cashapp?

Cashapp is a mobile payment wallet that can make and receive payments. Americans can top-up their balance at land-based retail locations like Walgreens, Walmart, CVS, 7-Eleven, and Rite-Aid.

Can I deposit and withdraw at a Cashapp casino?

Cashapp casinos are not as common as, say, Neteller casinos. Still, a few casinos accept Cashapp deposits and withdrawals.

Why doesn’t my online casino accept Cashapp?

Given the piecemeal state laws surrounding online gambling in the United States, not all jurisdictions allow payments using Cashapp. Still, as the online gambling picture evolves, we expect this might change.

Is my money safe using Cashapp?

Cashapp uses the latest security features, including PCI-DSS level 1 data encryption and verification locks (Touch ID, PIN, or Face ID). Players are also notified of any account usage.