Need to hit friends up for cash? There's an app for that

Person-to-person mobile payment services like PayPal-owned Venmo are catching on as a way to bypass searching for an ATM or splitting a bill on multiple cards when the dinner check comes.

For Dan Callahan, 22, a digital marketing manager in Philadelphia, using Venmo means avoiding the awkward situation of nagging his roommate for rent since you can request payment via the app.

In Venmo's case, it's free to link to your bank account or debit account but credit card transactions cost a 3 percent fee.

[...] the fee for using credit cards discourages their use, even though credit cards are usually fraud-protected for anything over $50, unlike some bank accounts and debit cards.

Cynthia Larose, chair of the privacy and security practice at the law firm Mintz Levin in Boston, said users should be cautious.

Venmo, for example, says users aren't liable for more than $50 of any unauthorized transfers they find, but only if they contact the company within two days after learning of the theft.

Peer-to-peer systems typically work only for people who are on the same system, and multiple systems have sprung up.

PayPal's soon-to-be CEO Dan Schulman said the goal for Venmo is to eventually tie the app into PayPal's network of merchants and have more businesses accept Venmo.