About Venmo
Venmo is an American mobile payment service, owned by PayPal. It works by giving consumers the option to connect their Venmo account to a credit card, debit card or checking account and then use their funds to pay for goods and services as well as P2P transactions. It has more than 60 millions users.
Venmo at a glance
| Payment type | eWallet |
|---|---|
| Consumer markets | United States (US) |
| The consumer is debited in | USD |
| Processing currency | USD |
| Single payments | YES
|
| Merchant-initiated payments | YES - after your first successful payment, send the identifier of your consumer for subsequent payments. We can take payment without the consumer needing to be present.
|
| Withdrawals | Linked: YES Unlinked: NO
|
| Disputes | YES |
| Guarantee | There is a dispute process for Venmo payments that may lead to a chargeback. |
| Refunds | NO |
| Reporting | You can review your transactions in the Paysafe Business Portal. |
| Funding | For payments, PayPal pays you directly. PayPal pays you according to your contract with them, and this is generally T+x five days per week (where T is a business day up to HH:MM EST). The single set of funds that PayPal remits on Monday covers the period from the previous Friday through Sunday. For withdrawals, you maintain a liquidity balance with PayPal, which you need to fund. |
| Languages supported | EN |
| Dynamic descriptor | YES |
Note on currencies
- You can submit payments in the following presentment currencies: USD.
- For the best consumer experience, we recommend that you submit payments in the consumer’s local currency so that a single currency is used throughout the payment experience: USD (United States).
Prerequisites
To use Venmo on our gateway, you need:
- Your standard Paysafe credentials.
- A contract with PayPal providing the following details (which you need to pass to Paysafe):
- For payments: Braintree Merchant ID, Braintree Public Key and Braintree Private Key.
PayPal also gives you an account to receive payments. - For withdrawals: PayPal Account ID, PayPal Client ID, PayPal Secret and PayPal Webhook ID.
PayPal also gives you an account representing your withdrawal balance.
- For payments: Braintree Merchant ID, Braintree Public Key and Braintree Private Key.
Your assigned solution engineer/ support manager can guide you through these steps.
Certification
Unless you use our Checkout, you also need to certify with Paysafe and Venmo prior to going live. Your assigned solution engineer/ support manager can help you with this.
Integration options
We offer the following integration options for Venmo:
Payments API: YES
Paysafe Checkout: NO
Paysafe JS: NO
Supported use cases
You can make the following types of transaction:
- Use case 1: Payments
- Use case 2: Linked withdrawals
Best practice
We recommend that you follow these best practice guidelines:
- Use a webhook or query so that you always know the latest status - for example, you cannot rely on the consumer returning to your website as some consumers may close their browser.
- Use the dynamicDescriptor to customize the checkout experience within the Venmo app. The consumer sees some custom text during checkout, and on their Venmo statement.
The custom text has a maximum of 22 characters and is comprised of a concatenation of the following:- A prefix of VENMO * (2 whitespaces, accounting for 8 characters in total).
- The Business Name that you submitted on your application form to PayPal/ Venmo.
- The value that you submit in the dynamicDescriptor field.
NOTE: If the total length of the concatenated text exceeds 22 characters, it is truncated to 22 characters. If you submit an invalid character, the content you pass in the dynamicDescriptor field is ignored.