Venmo

About

Venmo is a mobile payments application for internet-ready mobile and desktop platforms that allows people to send and receive money to each other regardless of bank or device. The app works as a bank, keeping money in an account, but links to the user's checking account or credit card if the user has insufficient credit.

History

Former college roommates and frequent collaborators Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail founded Venmo in 2009.^[1] After several attempts to build a company in music, social media and mobile payments, the pair found success in the middle of a wireframe (shown below) of one of their creations. Inside a schmatic for a music download service that would allow users to pay artists directly, they discovered an SMS-based payment system they called "Venmo," which comes from a comination of the latin word for "sell," "vendere," and "mobile."

The pair soon realized that the SMS payment system was the real discovery and decided to research and perfect how to best make payments between users, as well as share what they are paying for, adding a social component to the payment system. Venmo would soon be shopped around to different investors.

In 2012, Venmo was acquired by Braintree for $26.2 million.^[2] The following year, PayPal acquired Braintree for $800 million. In 2016, the company announced that they would begin allowing merchants to start accepting Venmo payments, which is how the company plans on making money--by charging merchants fees for use. In Q1 of 2017, Venmo processed more than $6.8 billion in transactions.^[3]

Features

Venmo allows users to send and receive money via online credits and/or the user's checking account and credit cards. The app and web clients does not have specific restrictions, meaning that anyone on any web-ready device can receive money via Venmo.

Unlike other online payment apps, Venmo has a social media aspect to it. When the user signs on to Venmo the main screen features of a newsfeed of the user's Venmo network activity. When the user makes or requests a payment, they must write, using text or emoji, what the payment is for. These memos make up the newsfeed.

In 2017, Venmo added QR codes to the platform, which allows users to scan another user's phone to send money.

Highlights

Sean Spicer Venmo Account

On February 6th, 2017, it was discovered that the privacy settings on then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s Venmo account were left public, allowing people to view a feed of his account activity. After users began spamming his account with requests for money, screenshots of the public feed began circulating on Twitter (shown below).

Search Interest

External References