After turning down a huge merger deal with Facebook last year, many people were wondering what Snapchat might have up their sleeve. While Venmo, Google Wallet, and more try to take a business approach to peer-to-peer payments, Snapchat today swooped in from the consumer side. It just added a “Snapcash” payments option to its app through a deal with Square Cash. Now you can add a debit card, type a dollar amount into Snapchat’s text-chat feature, and hit the green pay button to instantly send a friend money. The feature is on Android now and is coming to iOS soon.
We first reported that Snapchat had filed trademarks around payments in July, and now we know why. Beyond p2p payments, the trademarks could prime Snapchat for ecommerce and payments to merchants as well. For example, the app could one day send you a Snap or show a Story ad from a mechant, and let you buy the product shown instantly through Snapchat. Depending on how its relationship with Square Cash works, Snapchat could also potentially cross-reference debit card info through Snapcash-connected accounts to improve its ad targeting. You can see how Snapcash works, with some extra song and dance in the video posted below.