Today, Venmo is known as the app that engenders some bitterness in relationships for making it easy to request reimbursement for so much as a bottle of wine shared between friends. But it was the hot payments app for quite some time. Venmo hasn’t changed much in recent years though and feels like it’s seen better days.
That’s changing somewhat today with the announcement of one-time and recurring payment scheduling. Starting soon, you’ll be able to schedule a payment to your roommate for your half of the utility bill to be sent to them automatically at the same time each month. Or vice-versa your roommate could pull your half of the rent each month on the 30th. The point is that it’s set-it-and-forget-it, between people who already use Venmo. The company says it’s been a highly requested feature.
Venmo explains that users who receive a scheduled payment request will see the request as a push notification, and they can cancel the request at any time from their settings. They will also receive a reminder of the payment request the day before it’s set to process in case they want to cancel it.
Scheduled payments and requests can be set to occur once, weekly, biweekly, or monthly.
Venmo remains a popular app for peer-to-peer payments but also operates more like a bank nowadays with direct deposit as well as debit and credit cards. It’s good for people who may have previously been unbanked, perhaps because they couldn’t afford monthly or overdraft fees. Either way, the new recurring feature should be a welcome addition for people who are already in the ecosystem.
Despite having a better-known brand, Venmo is actually smaller today in transaction volume than Zelle, which also allows for instant payments and was created as a partnership between the major banks, who saw Venmo as a threat. Most major banks offer Zelle to their customers, and it already has payment scheduling, so this helps Venmo catch up there.
Before anyone says it—sure, crypto could have done all of this already. We’re not having that conversation.
