The Gist:

• Amazon announced that it will no longer be accepting Venmo as a payment method for purchases beginning on Jan. 10, 2024.
• The tech giant hasn’t explained its decision, but some have speculated that Venmo wasn’t a secure enough payment platform to partner with Amazon.
• Amazon will still take payment from Venmo debit and credit cards.

Although Amazon offers its users many things, one of the things it prizes most is convenience. You can order things quickly, and they’ll ship to you almost immediately. Another way that the tech giant has maximized convenience is by allowing you to pay for goods in a huge variety of different ways.

Recently, though, Amazon announced that it will no longer be accepting payments through Venmo starting early in 2024. Now, many want to know why Amazon decided to stop accepting Venmo payments. Keep reading for all of the details.

In Amazon’s announcement that it will no longer be accepting Venmo payments, the company didn’t explain its decision. The tech giant did emphasize that there are still many ways for users to pay for orders, including using a credit card and through Apple Pay.

Amazon said that the change would be effective on Jan. 10, 2024, and that users would have to switch their payment method before then.

The company placed a particular emphasis on any subscriptions that might be tied to a Venmo account, as those will be charged automatically and be rejected if the payment information isn’t updated.

Also, Amazon clarified that while payments from Venmo itself will be banned, payments from Venmo credit cards or debit cards will still be allowed, just like most other major credit cards.

Because Amazon hasn’t explained its decision, all the public can do is speculate about why it may have decided to ban Venmo. Amazon might be launching some sort of rival service, and it wants to preemptively remove Venmo so that users will have to sign up for its service instead. Ultimately, though, we won’t know for sure until Amazon decides to explain the decision.

There’s something undeniably magical about Christmas, especially when you’re a kid and you get to wake up in the morning and see the gifts that Santa brought you in the middle of the night.

You thank your parents for allowing the jolly, large, bearded man to come into your home and hook you up with all of the gifts you’ve been begging them to get you.

You don’t question the economics of how Santa manages to make deals with companies from across the globe that are at the top of their respective industries. Nor do you really care about how one man is able to make so many deliveries in a single night or how he gets into houses without chimneys.

You just know that there’s no better feeling than tearing open that wrapping paper and seeing that special gift you’ve been thinking about for a long time.

And even if you don’t believe in Santa Clause or that Elves are making handshake deals with Japanese gaming companies to manufacture Nintendo Switches, you can still enjoy that element of surprise.

That is, unless an ill-timed delivery ruins the magic for you, which is what happened to this family in a viral TikTok and it looks like their doorbell camera recorded the entire thing.

TikToker @frankpappalardo writes in a text overlay of the clip: “The problem with ordering online when you have kids…”

In the clip, a dad can be seen coming home with his two daughters — it looks like they were picked up from school. And what was waiting for them? A giant box containing a toy that one his kids was really, really excited about.

Unsure of how to cover up the fact that the big Christmas surprise was effectively ruined at that moment, he stammers through some excuses that even the most gullible of children probably wouldn’t believe.

It’s hilarious to see him react in real-time, cussing up a storm and trying to convince the girls that they didn’t see the gifts or that it actually wasn’t for them but for someone else, but those kids seemed to know what was up.

Which means that they’ll have to play the waiting game until Christmas when they can finally open the gift.

It’s difficult to not wonder though: was he not receiving email updates about the status of his delivery? If it was delivered from Amazon he should’ve received a notification that it was delivered.

Or perhaps the source of his ire was the fact that he left specific instructions about the delivery, or maybe he just thought that the gift would’ve been delivered in a box and not just, you know, left out in the open for everyone in the world to see what he purchased?

He hints as much in the video, and it’s not that difficult to understand his frustration: it’s not like you get a Playstation 5 delivered to your house and the parcel service simply leaves the box on your front doorstep, unless it’s wrapped up in a different package.

What do you think? Is this on whoever delivered the package? Or should dad have been more proactive in monitoring when the packages were coming to the house and not assumed that there was going to be a box big enough to fit the large gift that he ordered for Christmas?

The Gist:

• Genie Wiley is considered the most abused child in history.
• Discovered at 13 years old, Genie became a subject of language and cognitive development studies. Despite progress, she struggled with communication and faced challenges after the study.
• Post-experiment, Genie’s life took a tragic turn in foster care. Experiencing further abuse, she regressed into silence, and her current whereabouts are unknown.

Some scientific cases might ring a bell to the average citizen — Pavlov’s dog (bell-ringing pun intended), Schrodinger’s cat, and the Stanford prison experiment are just a few of those mainstream experiments. But the story of Genie Wiley was also circulated for decades as she provided a unique opportunity for scientists.

Genie, a fake name given to protect her identity, is often considered the most abused child in history. Because of this, when she was discovered, she could barely walk, chew, or use the toilet. Most importantly, she couldn’t communicate at all. Scientists used her to study language and cognitive development, but the story doesn’t have such a happy ending. So, what happened to Genie Wiley?