The Friction Was Never the Problem
Square Cash, when it launched in late 2013, reduced the transaction to its barest components: a dollar amount in the subject line, an email sent to cash@square.com, done. No new account, no app required—just email doing something email was never designed to do.
The logic made sense as a pitch. PayPal had become the thing you used apologetically; Venmo was still sorting itself out; and the idea that sending twenty dollars to a friend should be as frictionless as a text message had a certain obvious appeal. Money shouldn’t be ceremonial. It should move like information.
What these products always get wrong is the assumption that friction is technical. Asking someone for the twenty they owe you is uncomfortable whether you do it in person, by text, by beautifully designed app, or by typing a number into a subject line. The money carries the awkwardness. No interface can fix that. Nothing designed in Silicon Valley can fix that.
It launched US-only, naturally, leaving everyone else to watch from the outside and keep splitting bills the old-fashioned way.