Is Venmo Safe For Online Transactions? The Ultimate Guide

August 15, 2024 By Johan Curtis No Comments 9 minutes

Nowadays, smartphones have made use of everything easier within the reach of a few clicks on your touch screens. From scrolling Facebook to watching shorts on YouTube, operations have advanced to watching high-resolution movies on your phones without experiencing interruptions. Not only this, you can now make banking transactions easily on your phone. To make transactional processes on your phones easier, apps like PayPal, Zelle, Wise, and more have made transactions seamless. Venmo is another app that makes it seamless for you to make online transactions. But is Venmo safe to use? Let’s have a look at it in this blog.

NOTE: With the advent of online transactions, online scams are also common. It’s hard to determine if an unknown number is calling you and pretending to be an authentic person from the bank asking for confidential information. To keep yourself safe from suspicious links through texts and emails, a FastestVPN subscription is necessary. Protect yourself from malicious software and links with a premium VPN as your online shield.

What is Venmo? Why do people use it? Is there any downside to using Venmo, or is it an advantage over others? These and all the other questions a user may ask himself before using the P2P app will be discussed in the blog. 

What Is Venmo?

This brings us to this question: What is Venmo? Venmo is a smartphone application that lets consumers send and receive payments between their banks, whether the same bank or a different one. Users can also use the platform through the browser, making it an easier alternative to access transactional platforms without downloading their apps. 

The P2P social application for sending and receiving money is only available in the United States. If, for any reason, you are trying to access the app from outside the States, the application will show you an error message. 

However, you can avoid this message by using a powerful VPN with USA servers to complete P2P transactions seamlessly. With a VPN, your IP address will be masked and changed even if you send or receive money outside the United States. This will let the app think you are still in the USA, trying to complete your transaction, or receive money from the USA. 

How does Venmo Work?

Hanging out with your friends is all fun until you all decide to eat somewhere fancy, and when it comes to paying bills, you show up with the classic “don’t have any money on me” move. But gone are those times and you have to actually pay for what you order. Or when you are with your family, you borrow money from them and tell them to return it in a while, but you never carry cash with you.

Enter Venmo, a social platform created for P2P payments. Now, you don’t have to carry cash around; you just need to have it in your account. Link Venmo with your bank account, and whenever you have to contribute your share or return the money you owe someone, you just have to scan the QR code or use the one-click method to send your share over to the other person’s account. 

Is Venmo Safe To Use?

While some people think Venmo is safe to use, others are too scared of the conspiracies around them. Most people would ask questions like, is Venmo safe to link to a bank account? Or Is Venmo safe to use with strangers? In general, it is a safe P2P platform. 

However, it is important to check that your money is moved to your bank account from Venmo sooner rather than later. Keep the change you need for small payments rather than storing a large amount of money in Venmo for a long time.

Is Venmo Safe For Linking Bank Accounts

Well, there are always two sides to a story. Venmo isn’t capable of scamming you or getting your bank info out of you, which is private and confidential information. This can only be done by an outsider, whether an individual or an organization. These are very common scams and have been around since the banking days, even when banks had their own apps. To safeguard yourself from such scam calls, just remember this: no bank ever calls its customers to ask them about confidential information like your debit or credit card number, 2FA code, or anything that requires a PIN or a QR code.

Is Venmo Safe To Recieve Money From Strangers?

Apart from sending money, which you most often do with your friends and family, a popular question remains: Is Venmo safe to receive money from strangers? When dealing with strangers for receiving or sending money, ensure the person you are dealing with is authentic. Most marketplace scams happen because the seller or the buyer who is expecting strangers not to be scams turns out to be scams. After all, they don’t do a thorough background check. 

How To Ensure Safety While Receiving Money From Strangers On Venmo

Now, you may wonder how you can do a background check on a stranger on places like the Facebook marketplace, Etsy, eBay, Craigslist, etc. 

So, first things first, you must check their display picture to learn more about them. If a stranger is using a real image, check if it’s looking believable enough to be authentic, and then move to the next step. 

The next step is to check the details provided, such as their location, contact number, or buying/selling details and reviews. If it’s a person who has managed numerous positive reviews on the platform, then it is generally a moment of sigh. 

However, newer marketplace scams have hacked the workaround, and gathering reviews on a platform is easier than ever. 

Then, you must check the account creation details and how often the person you are dealing with indulges in operations like buying and selling. 

Finally, always ask the stranger to meet in a crowded area to eliminate any chance of getting scammed. You must also ask them to transfer money into your bank accounts rather than on social payment platforms. 

What Can You Use Venmo for?

Venmo is a peer-to-peer payment platform that people mostly use to transfer cash to other people without reaching into their pockets to grab real cash. The sending and receiving occur only through the application, and the amount is deducted from your bank account. 

Here’s what you can sue Venmo for:

• Send and receive money to your friends and family online. 
• Link your debit cards, credit cards, and your US bank account to Venmo.
• Make random purchases in the middle of the night. 
• Pay for your OTT platforms, including Netflix, Spotify, and Hulu.

Are there any downsides to using Venmo?

While Venmo looks good to Gen Z and millennials, it’s also crucial to learn if the app has any downsides. The biggest downside is its identity verification, which many people feel is a useless process. 

On the other hand, Venmo has to imply identity verification as federal laws under the USA Patriot Act require it. Moreover, it is also a step to eliminate the risk of scamming when people refer to Venmo during the most common scams. 

If you are wondering why you shouldn’t use Venmo, then you must use traditional banking apps or the other more established brands for online P2P payments that are much easier to use and more secure. 

However, these other apps come with their own downside, as some fees are involved whenever you make a transaction. 

Common Venmo Scams: How to spot them

Now we move on to this: what are the most common Venmo scams that the consumer seems to fall victim to? These are the most common scams that are not only limited to Venmo but if scammers, be they individuals or entire organizations operating to scam customers online. 

Let’s have a look at the most common scams and attempts you may most likely bump in, if ever:

It could either be a fake-listing scam or an in-person scam. You have to be absolutely careful whenever dealing with strangers, be it online or in real life.

In fake listing, a scammer would ask you to pay for stuff you want to purchase, online, only for yo to know that there was no product and it was just an attempt to get money from you.

However, during an in-person scam, you could be asked to fill out a form that demands your eprsonal information, such as mail, password, 2FA code, etc. Never fill forms like this ever. 

How to Stay Safe Using Venmo

Now, how could a person stay safe while using Venmo? Scams always happen, but what can you do to stop yourself from getting into these scams? 

Never share Private and Confidential Information

First of all, never share your confidential information with anyone on call. Keep this in mind, a bank or a P2P app will never call you asking for your passwords, PIN, or QR codes. Immediately cut the call if the caller asks for such information. 

Use A Private Account

Secondly, set your Venmo account to private. Not many people may know this, but Venmo transactions are public. If you have already dealt with a couple of transactions in the past and want to change the settings for future transactions as well, head over to your settings and change the option from the privacy tab.

Lock Your Account

Make sure your Venmo app is locked with a specific PIN. To enhance things further, use a two-factor authentication to prevent anyone from logging in to your account.

Keep a Minimal Amount in Venmo

Venmo is made to pay your friends and family what you can’t carry with you at gatherings. You do no need to carry large amounts anywhere, so don’t put a lot of money in your Venmo app. Just a minimal amount in your account would do the job.

The End

So, you learned what Venmo is and some common scams associated with the app. Is Venmo safe to use? Nevertheless, using apps like Venmo is all good when you pay another person with your e-wallet. These apps put you at ease of not carrying your wallet or cash with you all the time. This is why the people of this generation feel good about just paying with their smartphones whenever and wherever they please. However, only you can safeguard yourself from common Venmo scams if the scammer reaches out to you through an unknown and unsaved number. Apart from rejecting these calls immediately, protect your online presence and enhance your e-payments while being outside the USA with a FastestVPN subscription!

[fastest-cta]