Soon, it will pay to use Venmo.
Specifically, the subsidiary payment service owned by Braintree will soon release “Pay With Venmo,” a service that will let users pay for stuff with money held on their account by Venmo. Sources said the feature is already in development and will be released “soon,” Bank Innovation learned.
“Pay With Venmo” would be similar to the existing “Pay With PayPal” feature already implemented by PayPal, which owns Braintree, Venmo’s parent. “Pay With PayPal” lets users purchase goods by withdrawing funds from a user’s PayPal account, as opposed to withdrawing from a user’s bank account.
No comment from Venmo.
If PayPal and Venmo sound similar, it is because they are. The difference is that Venmo is geared towards millennials and adds a social feed where you could see the transactions of friends and other Venmo users. The app has seen steep growth over the past few months — Business Insider estimates that Venmo is already processing over $1 billion in volume annually.
To date, Venmo has been primarily a social P2P payments company, but added Venmo Touch and Venmo Button recently. Touch allows users to store their credit card information (yes, Visa Checkout is basically the same thing), while Button is a web plugin that facilitates tips and donations via Venmo.
With “Pay With Venmo,” Venmo apparently wants to capture some of the e-commerce market that PayPal doesn’t have, specifically in the key 18-35 demographic. Similarly, we can see “Pay With” as offering the potential for more in-app purchase volume for Venmo, especially since the company has always pursued a mobile-first strategy and Venmo users are already comfortable with mobile transactions.