- Remember how trying to figure out
how to split dinner with your friends
was kind of complicated?
There was the whole I'll get dinner
and then you can get dinner next time
and just figuring out how to split the bill.
Well, now there's technology
where you can send money to anyone literally within seconds.
So in this video, I'm covering the best apps
for you to send money to friends and family both here
in the US and internationally.
(meditative music)
Hey, what's up guys?
It's Justine with The College Investor:
Investing and Personal Finance for Millennials.
And today we are talking about apps
that you can use to send money
to anyone within seconds
and it makes it so much easier
than writing a physical check
or figuring out how to split things up
or just physical cash.
Who uses that anymore?
That's why we have the apps.
To let's hop into the best apps that you can use
right here in the US to send money domestically.
The first one is Venmo.
You've probably heard of Venmo.
In fact, this is the most popular peer-to-peer cash app
that I know and that I personally use
with my friends and family.
So some of the great features about Venmo
is that it's free to use.
So you connect your bank to the app
and then you can use that money from your bank,
send it to Venmo and then it gets sent
to your friends or family and vice versa.
So if you were to receive money through Venmo,
it hits your Venmo wall at first
and then you'll have to transfer it to your bank.
Now, transfers can take anywhere between one
and three days depending
on when you request that transfer
if it's during normal business hours
or on the weekends.
And then also, if you want to do an instant transfer,
and get that cash right away
to your bank account,
there is going to be a 1% fee based on the transfer amount.
The next app that you'll wanna consider is Zelle.
Now, a lot of major banks actually connect
with the Zelle app so that you can send money back
and forth to friends and family.
When I looked this up,
I saw that major banks like Chase,
Wells Fargo, and Bank of America were listed
as partnering with Zelle.
So it makes it really easy
to pair up with your bank account.
You can also connect this with debit cards,
however, Zelle does limit the number
of transactions and the amounts
that you can transfer using their app.
The next app that you can use to send money domestically
is of course, PayPal.
You can send $10,000 or more through the PayPal app.
All you need is an email address
and phone number to sign up.
And then again, you're going to connect your bank account
to your PayPal account
and then it's going to take anywhere
between one to three days to transfer that money out
of your PayPal account into your bank account,
depending on when you request that transfer.
If you want the money right away,
there is an instant transfer fee of 1%
and if you were trying to send money with a credit card,
they are going to charge you 2.9% plus 30 cents per transfer
and that's pretty standard across the board,
so you'll wanna take a look at that
if you're considering PayPal.
So Venmo, Zelle and PayPal really are the front runners
but we also wanna give mention
to other apps that you can send money domestically,
including Cash App.
Cash App is just like Venmo,
except there are limited transactions
that you can make, up to $7,500 weekly.
Then there's also Apply Pay
where you can send money if you're an avid iPhone user
and all your friends and family are as well,
you can send money through iMessage
and then on the opposite end,
if you are a Google user,
you can send money through Google Pay
to any of your Google contacts.
Okay, let's talk about the best apps
to send money internationally.
Now, in the past, places like Western Union
or MoneyGram were typically the types
of providers where you could send money internationally.
And I remember when I was studying abroad in Australia,
we actually had to do a wire transfer
from my US bank over to my newly established Australian bank
and it was not very straightforward.
Luckily, there are apps in place
that help take care of this
so that you can send money internationally a lot faster.
Now, keep in mind with any of these apps,
you are going to experience transfer fees
and exchange rate fees,
so you'll wanna see the discrepancies
before you make a decision.
The first app that you're going to want
to look into is TransferWise.
Now, TransferWise keeps their fees relatively low.
They support over 56 currencies and 70 countries
and their transfer fees are less than 1%
plus they use published exchange rates,
so you're not going to see any markups.
The next app that you'll wanna consider
for international money transfers is Xoom.
That's Xoom with an X.
X-O-O-M.
Xoom has small transfer fees,
so you're going to see transfer fees
between 3 and $5
but the exchange rate can be marked up to 3%.
They do support more countries than TransferWise,
which could make this a better app for you.
Another thing about Xoom that's really nice
is that you can do cash pickup locations.
So if you were sending money to a different country,
the person in that country
can actually go to a physical location
and pick up physical cash.
Now, our runner-up honorable mention
in this category is OFX.
If you do business overseas
or you need to pay bills overseas,
this is going to be the best app for you
because they have favorable terms
and fees that go along with it.
So if you're business minded
and you're doing business internationally,
OFX is something that you'll wanna take a look at.
So I feel like transferring money,
whether it be in the US or internationally
to literally anybody has gotten so much easier thanks
to the help of these types of apps.
I absolutely love using Venmo for things
like picking up something
that I found on Facebook Marketplace
or sending money to friends and family
without having to figure out
how we're going to get each other physical checks
or physical cash.
Just makes it so much easier.
So if you're wanting ease
with your money management,
regardless if you're sending it or not,
then be sure to check out all
of our free resources at thecollegeinvestor.com.