I did a favor for an acquaintance I trust. They rewarded me with a $20 Venmo credit. They texted it to my iPhone.
Questions:
- Do I have to have a Venmo account to use it?
- Is Venmo safe?
- How do I ‘cash’ in my credit?
Thanks in advance.
Yes, you need a Venmo account.
You can use the money to pay other people (for example garage sales or flea markets) or you can connect the account with your bank account and transfer it or you can get a Venmo debit card and use it anywhere you would use a Mastercard.
It’s safe for small amounts of money, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to do large transactions with it or keep a substantial amount of money in the account.
It’s owned by Paypal.
Thanks
Do I need to connect it to my bank account to open an account?
No, it’s not a requirement. But if you want to transfer the $20 credit to your bank account, then of course you’ll need to link your Venmo account to your bank account. Otherwise, that $20 will stay in your Venmo account until you use it for a payment via Venmo. Venmo will NOT send you a check for the account balance.
Info for next time …
Within the US, Zelle is a vastly better system as it’s direct bank-to-bank. Like Visa and Mastercard, it’s owned by the US banking industry and most US banks subscribe to it. Credit unions are much spottier about being part of the Zelle network.
I have both, but I find everything about Zelle is simple and easy and open, whereas everything about Venmo is closed and proprietary and therefore harder to use. Not that using their website or app is hard as such, but that extracting the value to use in the world is hard. As the OP is now learning more about.
So if someone offers to send me money via Venmo, I always ask if they can Zelle instead.
If you really don’t like the idea, then download Venmo & get it all set up, transfer your twenty bucks to your bank account (or use it to pay someone who accepts Venmo for some other pending transaction) and then uninstall & delete the whole thing.
Or hang onto the whole shebang for the next time some whippersnappers pay you with newfangled tech. 
Ha ha, I’m not dead set against it. In fact I probably should have an account, I’m just not really tech savvy. She sent me the $20 so I would like to use it. I googled Venmo and got a lot of hits for ‘scam’ so it’s a little frightening.
But I did set up an account - though haven’t linked it yet.
Do I need to transfer the 20 on my iPhone to my account or can I pay someone right from my phone?
I’m not as familiar with Venmo (I’m one of the “old people” who still uses PayPal 
) but I believe you can do either, or both, as you prefer.
Venmo itself is not a scam - it’s a legit financial platform. It’s just where a lot of scammers conduct business. If you buy or sell things and use Venmo as a payment option, just be careful and ask questions.
The thing to recognize is that it’s like cash: once it’s gone, it’s gone. No protection like a credit card. And the banks are NOT friendly about helping out with fraud.
My credit union doesn’t support Zelle: I use Venmo a lot, to reimburse friends for tickets, meals, Uber rides, etc., and also to pay for music lessons and to pay any musicians I hire for gigs (unless they prefer cash). It isn’t a scam, and I haven’t had any trouble with it being connected to my debit card. 
The only annoying thing – which you should note – is that you can only use your balance to pay for something at the same or a lower amount: so, a $20 balance can only be applied to something that totals $20 or less. It can’t be applied toward something that costs, say, $30. I’ve had a $36 balance for months, because my recent payments have all been for $100. I’ll use the balance eventually, so I’m not worried about it, but I’d prefer if the balance would be applied to whatever I pay next.
As stated you can get a Venmo debit card–and use it to pay for gas for example.
Yeah, I really don’t want/need another card. 
You do know you can transfer your balance to your linked bank account, right?
A couple years ago my gf needed cash and I had some so I gave it to her. Later that day I got an email(?) saying she had sent me the money via Zelle (IIRC).
I was all WTF? I gave her US Currency and in return I got an email? So I tried setting up a Zelle account. Turns out my small local bank wasn’t recognized by Zelle. I was kind of upset. My gf eventually was able to cancel the transaction and get her money back.
Sounds similar to Interac in Canada. You can use it to send money to anyone with a Canadian bank account, or likewise receive money from anyone. And all the sender needs is the recipient’s email address – no bank account info needs to be provided.
The recipient doesn’t even have to register with Interac. If they’re registered, the money transfer is automatically deposited and they don’t even have to do anything, they just get a notification. If they’re not registered, the email contains what is essentially a token that lets them log into their bank account and deposit the money. The actual money transfer itself occurs seamlessly behind the scenes, presumably via SWIFT or something like it. Really nicely designed system. A lot of service people like being paid by Interac now, and for them it’s certainly preferable to taking credit cards. I convinced my snowplow guy to use it so I don’t have to drive to the bank and take out ridiculous amounts of cash.
Of course I could…if I had a linked bank account. Only once or twice have I ever had a balance high enough to temporarily link my account and transfer the funds; I always immediately unlink it. It’s connected to my debit card, that’s it. But my post wasn’t a problem that needs solving: I’m really not worried about the $36, because like I said I know I’ll use it eventually. My only point was to let the OP know that balances can’t be applied to amounts greater than the balance.
Yes, functionally almost identical. But as folks have mentioned, the primitive US consumer banking industry is highly fragmented and lots of small institutions or credit unions don’t (or can’t) connect to Zelle.
I’d expect that in more civilized nations the government would require all parts of the financial system to interact fully with the various clearinghouse type entities.
Back to the OP …
They mentioned that upon googling [Venmo] they saw lots of scary looking pages talking of scams. Zelle is no different in that. It’s a 100% legit payments vehicle, which also means it’s 100% something that scammers want to use to receive funds they con from their marks. So when you get a phone call from “Special Agent Bob Smith of the IRS” telling you to Zelle them your $300 owed in back taxes, don’t. But the problem isn’t Zelle (or Venmo), the problem is scammers.
If you know who you’re paying and don’t bungle their email or phone number, they will get their money with no shenanigans.
Every now and then I find a thread that makes me feel young.
I found that Venmo is very convenient for small personal transactions. Used it a lot to reimburse friends for food or Girl Scout cookies. Simple and easy to use. Now that I’m retired I have a balance on it that will take a while to whittle down.
I despise Venmo. I was okay when I could link it to my credit card, but my bank started designating Venmo charges to my card as “cash advances” and that was the end for me. No way in hell am I giving that scammy ass site my banking information. Unlike with credit cards, there are significantly fewer options for redress if someone steals your banking info.
One thing they do is they broadcast your purchases to all your “friends.” I’m sure you can disable the feature but they activated it automatically without consulting me.
I use Zelle, or, if I must, Paypal.