Guide to Venmo for business

Venmo has become popular among peer-to-peer payment apps, mostly for its ease of use and the way it has smartly positioned itself on social media.

The app publishes a record of transactions to its social feeds, making splitting dinner bills or evenings out with friends a fun experience. Venmo also makes it easy to move money into or out of your bank to pay friends or deposit funds.

Interestingly, Venmo has also moved into the business payments space and advertises its platform as a way for customers to pay at checkout through a business mobile website or app with the “social benefits of the Venmo platform” included.

The goal of offering customers the option to pay with Venmo is simple. With a huge and enthusiastic user base, Venmo makes it more convenient for customers accustomed to using their platform to pay for the products and services they want.

If you have an online or a brick-and-mortar business and want to make it easy for your customers to pay for products and services, keep reading to learn how Venmo for business works and the pros and cons to watch out for.

Is Venmo free for businesses?

Vendors are not required to pay a specific fee to accept payments through Venmo, so you won’t need to worry about connecting your business credit card to fund the service.

It’s important to note that Venmo only facilitates payments to businesses through other third-party platforms. Simply put, you can accept Venmo payments as a company, yet the payments themselves have to go through a platform like PayPal or Braintree.

Venmo is owned by PayPal, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that Venmo can be used by customers to make payments through this platform. When a business sets up Venmo payments through PayPal, standard fees of 2.9 percent plus $. 30 will apply. When Braintree is selected as the third party processor, most merchants will pay the same 2.9 percent plus $. 30.

If you choose to accept Venmo for your business, you won’t notice any additional charges for accepting this form of payment; integrating with Venmo simply lets you add another payment option for your customers.

How does a business accept Venmo?

To accept payments through Venmo, businesses need to integrate with another payment platform, such as PayPal or Braintree. If you already accept PayPal as payment, you can select to allow Venmo payments on the mobile website your business uses.

Because PayPal owns Venmo, integrating payments using PayPal is probably easiest. PayPal also has an exceptionally good record when it comes to checkout conversions; you can integrate these two platforms once and you’re done. PayPal is already used by more than 237 million shoppers worldwide, so setting up Venmo payments through PayPal can be a smart choice.

PayPal Checkout even comes with Smart Payment Buttons that let customers choose the way they want to pay, either with PayPal, Venmo, PayPal Credit or other major debit or rewards credit cards. So, using this platform lets your clients decide how they want to pay for products or services (whether or not that means using Venmo).

This page on the PayPal website tells you exactly how to set up Venmo acceptance using this platform. Note that Venmo isn’t workable through PayPal if you’re selling products or services in-person instead of online.

Integrating with Braintree works similarly, although this platform also refrains from letting you accept payments via Venmo if you’re selling goods and services in-person or if you’re receiving payment for goods and services through the Venmo app. When you accept payments through Braintree, also note that you can offer Venmo as a payment option on its own instead of one that’s linked to another payment method like PayPal.

Like PayPal, Braintree offers a step-by-step guide on how to integrate Venmo for your business so you can begin accepting payments this way.

Is Venmo secure?

If you’re thinking of setting up a Venmo business account, you’re probably wondering if your transactions are secure. Fortunately, Venmo uses industry-standard practices when it comes to encrypting your account information and identifying unauthorized transactions.

Venmo also uses the “https”: and a lock next to the web address, which lets you know the encryption features are turned on.

Users who want to ensure their Venmo account is even more secure have the option to set up multi-factor authentication and a specific PIN code for their mobile app.

The bottom line

Venmo for business is yet another payment option business owners can rely on to accept payments for their products and services. Further, integrating this app into an existing business strategy may not require much legwork if your business already accepts payments through PayPal or Braintree.

Note, however, that Venmo does not work for in-person transactions, and that allowing this payment method may not make sense if your customers don’t normally pay with a mobile app.

Before you sign up and begin accepting payments for your business, take the time to read more about this payment option and how it might help you increase sales or make payments more convenient for your customers.