Is there a lower resistance alternative for a general consumer transferring money to a friend over the web/mobile phone? I default to using PayPal since the chances of my friend having a Paypal account is higher than the newer services.

I've been experimenting with Dwolla lately. They charge $0.25 per transaction over $10 (and nothing for under $10). The downside is they skip credit cards and go straight for your bank account so you a) need to hook up your bank account to them (which I did for PayPal anyway), and b) unless you have money hanging out in your Dwolla account, paying someone takes 3 days for the bank transfer to clear (which, again, is going to happen with PayPal anyway if you use a bank and don't run a balance, like me).

My only real problem with Dwolla is their iOS app sucks, and their website isn't a whole lot better. But I've had no problems with their actual service, although I've only transferred a few hundred dollars so far.

Venmo (agreed, it's a newer service and not everyone has an account yet, but it's the easiest/lowest friction one I've seen.)

sending money P2P with the paypal app is fairly friction-less. Either way - this is great news for an industry (Fin-Tech) that needs more alternatives and more transparency