Venmo is an American mobile payment service created in 2009 and is now owned by PayPal. Venmo was designed to help friends and family share bills, such as movie tickets, food, rent, or event tickets.
Account users can send money to others via a mobile phone app; the sender and receiver must be residents of the United States.
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In this article, we will be telling more about the history of Venmo and who owns the company.
History of Venmo
Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail met as undergraduate roommates at the University of Pennsylvania and developed Venmo.
They wanted to build a transaction system that peers could use. According to Kortina, the two were first motivated to design a transaction solution while helping a buddy open a yogurt store and “realizing how bad old point of sale software was.”
Along with these factors, a slew of other serendipitous events arose, all of which contributed to Venmo’s invention.
Kortina and Magdon-Ismail came up with the notion of sending a text message to buy an MP3 of a local jazz program.
The vacation to Kortina
Finally, when Magdon-Ismail misplaced his wallet on vacation to Kortina, the concept was solidified. The procedure of paying off their debt was inconvenient, especially when contrasted to the simplicity of mobile phone transactions.
They started working on a technique to send money using mobile phones shortly after. Venmo was first introduced in 2009.
Their early prototype used text messages to send money, but they soon switched to a smartphone app to make transactions more convenient.
Before October 2015, Venmo did not allow consumer-to-business transactions. Venmo started on January 27, 2016, when it was working with a small group of shops to accept Venmo as a form of payment.
Munchery and Gametime were among the first launch partners. Venmo is now accepted by all merchants who accept PayPal. Venmo’s merchant offering did not allow “selling goods or services in person” as of May 2018.
PayPal said in October 2020 that starting in the first half of 2021, Venmo and PayPal services will allow customers to acquire and utilize cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin in chosen foreign markets.
Venmo said on April 20, 2021, that it would begin rolling out the ability to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrencies on the platform.
However, only a few people have access to the service, and bitcoin transactions are expected to be available to the entire user base in May 2021.
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Who Owns Venmo?
PayPal is the company that owns Venmo. Both firms are well-known providers of mobile payment solutions. Both Android and iOS devices accept fund transfers through the mobile app.
Venmo requires users to be citizens of the United States to use the app. Venmo was founded in 2009 to make bill splitting easier among friends.
It quickly gained popularity among people of all ages. Venmo was responsible for handling $159 billion in consumer transactions in the first quarter of 2018.
It is a well-known app used by many people all across the United States. Venmo was bought for the first time in its brief lifetime in 2012 when Braintree paid $26.2 million for it.
The parent business, Braintree, was acquired by PayPal the following year. As a result, PayPal, another cashless transaction service, owns Venmo.
Venmo and Paypal: Way Forward
Dan Schulman, the CEO of PayPal, believes that adding additional capabilities like bill payment, which allows users to pay for all of their services through a single platform, would make Venmo even more popular than it already is.
He expects that regular Venmo users would be happy about the additional capabilities that have been offered.
Venmo revenue is expected to climb by 60% in 2020 compared to the previous year, according to PayPal.
In January 2020, Venmo’s revenue run rate was reported to reach $550 million. While these percentages are encouraging, PayPal already has a revenue of more than $21 billion, indicating that Venmo can expand.
Both Venmo and PayPal executives recognize that Venmo is a platform that can generate big money for the parent firm, and they are putting their resources into maximizing Venmo’s 60 million user base’s potential.
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Conclusion
Venmo is being transformed into a platform that draws users and keeps them engaged to the wide variety of services available to them by adding new functions and features such as commercial transactions, direct payments, and cryptocurrencies.
Venmo will soon become a platform chosen by all citizens, not just millennials, if it continues down this route of innovative innovation.
