Bravo App Review: Pay or Tip People Standing Nearby, 2% Transaction Fee

The Bravo app is a payment app, similar to the Venmo concept, but with a very specific specialty of paying people who are physically standing nearby for services. The app uses GPS technology to locate each user (you turn it off when you don’t want it to track you), and it only allows you to pay people standing nearby.

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They were featured on Shark Tank in November 2017, see the episode on ABC here (begin at minute 13:30). Techchrunch wrote about it back in 2015.

Since payments run on GPS, there’s no need to exchange personal information, not even an email address or phone number. This makes it an excellent choice for things like tipping a waiter, valet, or musician. Their blog indicates that payments can not be cancelled once sent making it a prime choice for Craigslist sales. Bravo has also began working with some local charities as well to allow donations through the app.

Payments are made via bank or credit/debit card. No payment information is stored in the app itself, it’s all handled by Braintree.

The app charges a 2% fee to the sender on each transaction; no fees for recipient. 2% fee is quite reasonable, and you can typically recoup that fee from credit card rewards. They primarily hope to monetize the service with a $5 monthly subscription fee for business owner recipients.

The terms exclude peer payments and payments to family or friends. There might also be payment limits. Anyway, this isn’t anything scalable, but sounds like a neat way to tip or pay artists using a credit card.

The big caveat, of course, is that the service provider needs to have the app. They began in Phoenix and seem to have gotten a decent footprint in that area, but for the rest of the nation their reach is much more sparse.

Thanks to u/ridgedivergent on Reddit for letting us know about the app