Venmo and PayPal are two of the most popular apps for sending money digitally to friends, family, or businesses. They have never been natively compatible, but according to Venmo, this is changing in November. Venmo users and PayPal users will be able to pay each other both in the United States and worldwide. This means PayPal users will be able to find and pay you using your phone number, and later using your email address.
For years, customers have used convoluted workarounds to transfer money between the two services. This has long been a pain point for users, especially since Venmo is owned by PayPal. Many users believed this kind of feature would already exist. Perhaps integrating the two services sooner would have discouraged users from creating accounts on both platforms.
This change means that PayPal users will be able to find Venmo users by inputting their phone numbers, and later, their email addresses. If you do not want PayPal users to be able to find you, you can update your settings in the Venmo app. Navigate to Settings, then Privacy, then Find Me. While you are there, you might also consider setting your Venmo transactions to private by default in the Privacy settings.
PayPal announced in July that it would broaden its network of payment systems, starting with Venmo. The companies did not confirm the date of the update until now. This collection of partnerships, which PayPal has named PayPal World, will also work with Mercado Pago, NPCI International Payments Limited, and Tenpay Global. This will help users send money internationally without barriers and fees.
Combined, Venmo and PayPal have 2 billion global users, according to PayPal.