3-Square Cash

Square is still a relative newcomer to the payments field, but the company has a lot of really good ideas. Square Cash, the invite-only service, is one of the more recent ones and it's pretty neat: instead of making someone sign up for Square, you can send money directly to someone's debit card. Sounds great, right? Ehhh. Pros There's no need for a Square account. Both Google and PayPal require you to set up an account to receive money. You can send it to someone without an account, but they can't do anything with their cash until they sign up. Flat fee for sending money (and none for receiving). While it sucks that you'll have a fee every time you send cash, Square's fee is fixed at $0.50. For a $5 transfer, that's quite a bit, but for anything above around $170, you'll pay less sending with Square than you will with PayPal or Google. Cons You probably can't use it right now. Square Cash is an invite-only service right now. Except, you can only get invited by someone with the service who is willing to send you cash. It doesn't take a large transfer, but it can still be pretty difficult to get your hands on an account. Square Cash is a one-off feature. Square does have a suite of other financial features, but most of them are targeted towards merchants. PayPal and Google Wallet are consumer-oriented services with a host of features you can use to pay for things. Conversely, you'll be setting up a Square account with a bunch of financial information for a single feature—assuming you can even get an invite. The invite-only nature of Square Cash means that debating its usefulness is moot for most people to begin with. However, if you can get your hands on an account, it will probably be a little easier to send money to someone since you don't have to go through a middle-man account.