Venmo etiquette is debatable... Now Venmo's numbers aren't. PayPal bought Venmo's parent company in 2013 for $800M. Last week, PayPal (finally) revealed Venmo's key info: Payments on the peer-to-peer payment platform jumped 73% to $21B in just the 1st quarter. But the big surprise was that total active digital users is right up there with big banks:
- JPMorgan: 51M
- Venmo: 40M
- Bank of America: 37M
- Wells Fargo: 30M
🍳🚕☕ = $$$... We also learned Venmo is expected to deliver PayPal $300M in revenues this year. So far, it has 4 main fees to make money off your endless friend-payback loop:
- Instant Transfers: 1% fee if you don't want to wait 48 hours to move that Venmo balance to your bank account.
- Credit vs Debit: A 3% fee to pay using your credit card instead of debit.
- Merchant fee: Venmo earns a small piece of the action when you pay Chipotle directly for a burrito bowl using the Venmo app.
- Interchange fee: It also takes a slice when you swipe its prepaid physical debit card, just like credit card companies do.
Emoji aren't a competitive advantage... PayPal's relying on your post-brunch venmoing game to protect its growth with Millennials and Gen Z. The CEO believes "the magic is its social experience." But Square's Cash App with 15M monthly users now outpaces Venmo in app downloads. And while Venmo thinks users will jump at its own planned credit card, Apple and Goldman just teamed up for one, too. 😥