this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
16 points (100.0% liked)
DeGoogle Yourself
15960 readers
6 users here now
A community for those that would like to get away from Google.
Here you may post anything related to DeGoogling, why we should do it or good software alternatives!
Rules
-
Be respectful even in disagreement
-
No advertising unless it is very relevent and justified. Do not do this excessively.
-
No low value posts / memes. We or you need to learn, or discuss something.
Related communities
!privacyguides@lemmy.one !privacy@lemmy.ml !privatelife@lemmy.ml !linuxphones@lemmy.ml !fossdroid@social.fossware.space !fdroid@lemmy.ml
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It really depends.
PayPal (and by extension Venmo) is primarily considered bad by people just because they have really crappy fees and account closure policies, as well as owning Honey, the browser extension that stole a ton of affiliate revenue from people and gave it to PayPal instead, while hiding the best coupons to protect profit margins of certain stores.
Cash App isn't great, but I'd argue it's better from a usability and feature standpoint for most people, and doesn't have as many scandals under its belt.
Most banks in the U.S. support Zelle, and because it's widely available on most banking platforms, it's quite likely someone will have it if you ask, even if they haven't set it up yet. (it's not hard to set up, they can just opt-in within their banking app and they're done)
At the end of the day, the most privacy preserving, and least likely to support a bad company medium of exchange, that most people will actually accept is probably going to be cash. Keep some on ya!
If you want solely digital transfers, meaning no cash, but don't want PayPal, Venmo, or Cash App either, you'll be hard pressed to find a good solution. Most banks have easy transfer tools, but only for transferring between accounts at that bank, so it only works if the people you want to send money to have the exact same bank as you.
You can always try Monero like other people here have suggested, but that's gonna have the issues of it being fairly annoying to acquire (most exchanges don't let you withdraw it, or will suddenly stop you at random points for "fraud reasons" and it might take a while to get more, and LocalMonero, a really good marketplace for it, shut down), most people and businesses not taking it (most people have never even heard the name in their lifetime, let alone have the app or digital infrastructure required to accept it or take it as payment), and the fact that it's not your currency, it's a separate one with its own value, meaning it can fluctuate.
Personally, I'd recommend trying Zelle if you can, if anyone you need to pay uses the same bank as you, see if your bank has built-in internal transfers, use cash for the most privacy while still being something most people will take, and use Monero for anything else you can use it for if that's reasonable for your use cases.