Is Venmo Safe? What to Know About the Popular Money Transfer App

You know that when a piece of tech becomes a verb – as in, “don’t worry about it, just Venmo me” – things have gotten serious. More than 83 million people use the peer-to-peer payment app for everything from splitting the sushi check to paying local vendors at the farmer’s market. And that means it processes some serious money – over $275 billion in total payment volume in a year, in fact. 

With that kind of popularity and that sort of money on the line, one question looms even larger than the company’s $1 billion-plus profit margins: Is Venmo safe? Let’s find out. 

What Is Venmo?

Mostly used as a popular peer-to-peer payment app in the United States (and less popular globally, in favor of alternatives like PayPal or Revolut), Venmo offers a quick and easy way to send money from one person to another. But if you’re here, you might still be wondering exactly how to use Venmo in the first place. 

After you download the app and enter your contact details and payment information, such as your bank account, debit card, or credit card, you can then make payments to anyone else on Venmo – from family to friends to merchants – by searching their contact info or scanning their QR code. 

Of course, you can also get paid by other Venmo users or request payment from others. When you receive money, it goes to your Venmo account balance, which you then transfer to your bank account. For the most part, Venmo is free to use in this way, only charging fees for a few select services. 

Typically, people use Venmo to send relatively small amounts of money to each other, whether it’s $20 to split a DoorDash dinner or $500 for a family emergency, free of charge. Venmo can also be used as a payment platform by businesses, and can even accept tips in that field. As it’s grown over the years, Venmo also offers additional financial services like credit and debit cards, but when we say “Venmo” here and ask “Is Venmo safe?” we’re talking primarily about the payment app.

Venmo is often the preferred form of payment for vendors at craft fairs, flea markets, and farmers markets.

Is Venmo Safe?

So that’s what the app is and what it does, but at the end of the day, is Venmo safe? The short answer is “yes, for its intended purpose.” As you may have guessed from its popularity, Venmo is a legitimate solution for sending and receiving peer-to-peer payments. On that front, the app offers a variety of protections, such as:

• Venmo uses legally compliant data encryption – the process of scrambling readable data into unreadable code – when users make transactions to help protect sensitive financial data from hackers and other bad actors.  
• The app’s fraud monitoring services help identify fishy transactions, and the company offers help if your account is used to transfer money without your consent. 
• Eligible merchants can opt to offer buyers Venmo’s in-house purchase protection policy, which offers guarantees and refunds in situations like damaged goods, lost packages, and inaccurate item descriptions (although there are some limitations). 

Here’s the thing, though. While Venmo is a reputable platform and usually works perfectly fine for its intended purposes, any payment platform that becomes as ubiquitous as Venmo has in the past decade or so is going to be a breeding ground for scams, schemes, and criminals out to get your money. That’s where it helps to exercise your street smarts. 

Common Venmo Scams

Even if you know how to use Venmo, it’s crucial to understand the platform's limitations. While the actual transferring of money on Venmo is generally safe, Venmo doesn’t offer users very many options for getting reversals or refunds once the money has been sent and received (more on that in the FAQs). Venmo is also not a bank, which means it’s not covered by FDIC insurance, either.

The lack of bank-like protections, the difficulty of tracing payments, and the unlikelihood of getting transfers reversed once they’re sent make Venmo an appealing and popular payment platform choice for scammers. 

While it’s not a conclusive list, here are just a few examples of common, documented scams that use Venmo in one way or another:

• The most common type of Venmo scam is phishing, a category of identity theft scam in which the perpetrator poses as a reputable person, company, or organization in order to get valuable private information – such as passwords or financial info – from victims. Fake customer service calls, emails, texts, or DMs from fraudsters posing as Venmo may claim there’s a problem with your account and ask you to provide your login details, which they’ll then use to make illicit transactions. 
• Similar phishing and smishing (phishing via text messages) scams may notify you that you have a Venmo payment waiting, tempting you to click a link to receive it. The link may request private info or install phishing malware on your device.
• In one common Venmo scam, fraudsters lure you in by posing as a friend, business, or family member and requesting payment on the platform.
• The accidental transfer Venmo scam occurs when a stranger sends you an “accidental” payment on the platform, then requests the money back, but asks for payment on a different platform – oftentimes, a sketchy or fake platform that steals your money or info.
• Similarly, overpayment scams are when you get an unsolicited payment on Venmo, and the sender then asks you for a partial refund. Here, they may attempt to reverse the original transaction, or they may have used a fraudulent payment source in the first place, which will get the payment overturned, leaving you out of pocket in either case.
• Online marketplace scams may request Venmo as payment, as it offers less traceability and buyer protections, to receive payment without actually providing the advertised product.
• For the same traceability and buyer protection reasons, catfishing scammers — or people posing as someone else to involve victims in a romantic or emotional relationship — may request Venmo payments as part of their grift. 

The key to using Venmo safely boils down to one golden rule: when you send money on the app, make absolutely sure that you’re sending money to the right person. If someone you’ve never met in person wants a Venmo payment from you, that should at the very least raise an eyebrow.

FAQs about Venmo 

When you’re Venmo big and you’re moving hundreds of billions of dollars worth of people’s money per year, those people naturally end up having a few questions. Digging a little deeper than “is Venmo safe?” here are answers to some of the internet’s most-asked concerns:  

Who owns Venmo?

In 2023, PayPal acquired Venmo for $800 million. You’ve probably heard of them – so, yes, Venmo is indeed a legit company. 

Does Venmo charge a fee?

For most transfers, no. You can send money from your Venmo balance, debit card, or bank account with no fee, and receive it without having fees taken out, too. If you use a credit card, though, Venmo charges a 3% transfer fee. Likewise, some Venmo transfers charge a 1.75% minimum fee for certain uses of Visa+. 

How does Venmo make money?

See above with those transfer fees. Venmo also offers cryptocurrency purchases and sales via the app, and charges fees of up to 2.2% on buying, selling, and transferring crypto. The company makes plenty of profit from interest charged on its Venmo credit cards, too. 

Does Venmo have buyer protection?

Outside of the aforementioned purchase protection that some merchants and businesses may offer when you pay with Venmo, the answer for personal peer-to-peer transactions is, “no, not really.” Reversals are very limited on the platform; you can only reverse a payment on Venmo if the recipient has an account in good standing, agrees to make the reversal, and has the funds in their Venmo account to do so. 

So it pays (literally) to make extra sure you’re making the intended payment to the intended person before you hit that “Send” button.  

While Venmo might not offer buyer prediction, PeopleWin can help you make sure you’re sending money to the person you intended to. Use our powerful people search tool to verify that the name of the person you’re interacting with matches contact information — like phone numbers, email addresses, and social media accounts — that you already know about them. That way, you can protect yourself from potential scammers long before the money ever leaves your Venmo wallet. 

As a freelance writer, small business owner, and consultant with more than a decade of experience, Dan has been fortunate enough to collaborate with leading brands including Microsoft, Fortune, Verizon, Discover, Office Depot, The Motley Fool, and more. He currently resides in Dallas, TX.