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Snapchat just made a huge move to get into mobile payments

Published Nov 17th, 2014 7:30PM EST

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Snapchat is now officially good for something more than discreetly sending out your nude selfies. Re/code reports that Snapchat has just unveiled a new mobile payments feature called Snapcash that will let you send money through Snapchat to your friends. The new feature was created through a partnership with Square, the popular mobile app used by merchants to process credit card payments on iPhones and iPads.

RELATED: Snapchat knew for months about a major security hole but failed to fix it

What makes Snapcash particularly impressive is that it sounds ridiculously easy to use.

“With Snapcash, users simply type out the dollar amount they’d like to send as part of any private message — for example, ‘here’s $5 for lunch,'” Re/code explains. “The app recognizes the ‘$5’ text and a green payments button illuminates next to the keyboard. Users can then tap that button to activate the payment, which is completed once the message has been sent.”

The other good news here is that Square will be in charge of securing users’ financial information, which is good because we frankly wouldn’t be too enthusiastic about having our bank account numbers stored on Snapchat’s servers given the company’s history of suffering data breaches.

Read more about Snapcash by checking out Re/code’s full report at the source link below.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.