Snapchat moves into payments with Snapcash

Snapchat, developer of a mobile application for sending disappearing photos, is teaming up with payments company Square so that users can send cash to each other.

Snapchat, which recently received an investment from Yahoo! Inc. that values the startup at $10 billion, will make the new feature, called Snapcash, available for users who are 18 or older with a debit card, it said in a blog post today.

The deal gives Square access to Snapchat’s users, who send more than 700 million disappearing “snaps” a day. Snapcash joins other apps such as Square Cash and Venmo in offering people a way to send and receive money quickly, such as when diners split a restaurant bill.

This is Los Angeles-based Snapchat’s second potential revenue-generating product in addition to advertisements, which debuted last month. The security of the debit-card numbers will be handled by San Francisco-based Square.

Snapchat apologised in January for a security breach that led to data on 4.6 million users being exposed in 2013.

Bloomberg