You Should Know What It Is Before You Decide If You Should Use Venmo To Make Payments

Venmo is an app you can use to send and receive money to/from family and friends and even some companies. Venmo is a PayPal product which is extremely easy to use. As you can see in the picture above*, not only can you request or send money to anyone on your “Friends” list, you can leave little comments, including emojis to make your transactions more fun. In fact, emojis are used extensively on Venmo. Your list of friends comes from your address book and from Facebook.

Venmo has a number of features to help you manage your money including a debit card and special offers. These extra elements make Venmo one of the easiest “pay money” apps around. But, there’s a catch.

You Should Know About Privacy Before You Decide If You Should Use Venmo To Make Payments

Notice in the picture above, that I’m not seeing just my transactions in Venmo, I’m seeing my friends’ activities, as well. By default, all your transactions are shown to all your friends and vice-versa. In fact, unless you make some changes in “Settings,” everyone in Venmo can see your money transactions. Why does Venmo do this? Because Venmo isn’t just a money app – it’s a Social Media program, as well. The idea is to add a money element to your social networking. Plus, Venmo wants to make it as easy to request or send money as it is to post something in Facebook or Instagram or wherever.

Is There A Way To Keep Your Privacy?

Is there a way to keep your privacy? In a manner of speaking, yes but no. Let’s look at how to change our settings for more privacy:

On the opening screen (see the picture below), in the upper right-hand corner, tap or click the three horizontal lines.

The following screen will appear. Tap or click the Settings (shown circled in red) category:

The next window will appear. When it does, tap the arrow to the right of the Privacy option (red arrow):

The following screen now appears.

Notice the three options at the top for future transactions. Public, as I mentioned, is the default setting. If you don’t want everyone and their neighbor seeing your money requests and payments, you need to change this to either Friends or Private. In the private mode, only the sender and the recipient see the transaction.

Now that you’ve made that decision, you need to take one more step to add privacy to your past transactions, if you have any. On the same screen, tap “Past Transactions.” The following options are available.

As you can see, you can change past transactions to either just Friends or All Private. Once you’ve finished with this chose, you can just close settings which will take you back to the opening screen.

One More Privacy Issue

President Biden uses Venmo. He had his transactions set to Private. That’s all good, isn’t it? Unfortunately, many of his friends did not have their settings set to private so transactions between his friends appeared and people on Venmo were able to figure out many of the President’s friends. (Security risk? You might check out the BuzzFeed article found HERE.) How is that important to you? Simple. It means that even if you make all your transactions private, you’ll still see the transactions of friends on your opening page. That may or may not mean anything to you.

My Final Thoughts Before You Decide If You Should Use Venmo To Make Payments

As I mentioned in my post, “6 Social Media Practices That Will Make You Happier,” I’ve been on Twitter for 12 1/3 years, on Facebook for 14 years, and on Instagram for 9 1/3 years. I realized from the start that when you’re on a Social Media site, most of your privacy goes out the window. While sites have gotten better at providing more privacy than in the beginning, there’s still a ton of our information shared and “out there.” It’s a trade off.

Think of a convenience store. You pop in to a 7-Eleven or a Cumberland Farms to grab a candy bar. You often pay two or three times as much than if you bought in bulk at a grocery store. However, you probably could not get in and out of a Wegman’s or a Publix as fast as a convenience store. In other words, you are trading having to pay a higher price for the convenience of shopping more quickly and, perhaps, buying in a smaller quantity (counting calories?). Same thing with Venmo – if you want the convenience of being able to quickly request or send money plus have some social interaction (comments and emojis), then you accept the lack of privacy.

Footnotes

Note: * I have blurred out the pictures and I have covered up parts of my friends’ names to protect the innocent! 😊