The team at Venmo, a mobile payment service created by PayPal, notes that their platform began as a social peer-to-peer payments tool for friends and family members to split their meal or share an “unforgettable experience.”
The Venmo team confirms that several years ago, they had extended the use of their platform to the merchant community, providing them the option to choose Venmo at checkout to “create a quick, simple and seamless experience.”
Venmo’s management also mentioned that during this time, the community has grown to over 65 million consumers who are interested in making Venmo “a greater part of their everyday spending.” For merchants who’d like to connect with Venmo’s “highly social and engaged audience,” and discover a way to beat the competition, the time has “never been better” based on overall demand, current market conditions and customers’ growing interest in transacting with the Venmo app, the company claims.
A recent study of Venmo customers reveals that almost half or 47% of clients want to use Venmo as a payment method during checkout with merchants (ranging from merchants in daily spend categories such as groceries to those providing clothing, shoes and fashion apparel). The data and related study found that nearly 90% of customers “prefer to pay with Venmo because they trust the brand, it’s easy to use and because it allows them to split transactions.”
As noted in a blog by Venmo:
“Another benefit to merchants is built in access to Venmo’s growing millennial customer base. Millennials are a hugely important audience as they are quickly becoming the dominant population, especially in the U.S. – with the most spending potential. According to data released by the Census Bureau earlier this year, more than half of the nation’s total population are now members of the millennial generation or younger. When looking at millennial and Gen Z populations combined, they totaled 166 million consumers.”
Venmo further notes that Millennials are a key demographic of social media networks. Of Venmo clients surveyed, around 53% revealed that they spend more time on social media apps such as Facebook and Instagram since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and “most expect to continue their current usage level of social platforms over the next 6 months.” Venmo aims to provide merchants a way to “reach this highly social audience through the Venmo social feed, rewards, payouts and more.”
Over 2 million merchants currently provide clients the option to make payments via Venmo during checkout. Merchants such as Lyft, Uber, TicketMaster, StitchFix, StockX, Hulu, Pottery Barn, Freshly, Amtrak and GoPuff, are now a part of the Venmo community.
(Note: In October of last year, the Venmo team had completed a survey of 2,217 U.S. Venmo clients to “gain a firsthand, real-time account of how their demographic, financial and purchase behaviors have changed over time and how Venmo can help them adapt to the new normal.” The survey was “administered through Focus Vision.” Responses are “weighted to ensure representation of the Venmo population by age, income & regional distribution across the U.S.”)