Venmo

Venmo is a financial app powered by PayPal, meant for sending money between private users and shopping on online stores. It offers more features than the main PayPal app, though it limits it to the US only. If you’re lucky, download Venmo for Android and iOS and experience the new cash!

Design 5/5

It’s hard to fail when banking and financial apps have been around for so long and worked out some necessary defaults. Venmo just does it like the others do: readable texts, contrast fonts, notification system integrated with your OS, compatible with the latest screen resolutions, and making use of all the innovations. Now that dark themes are introduced on both iOS and Android, Venmo will follow.

Usability 5/5

This app is, in fact, a better version of PayPal meant for private financial deals and online shopping. Add people to Venmo’s contact list, and you can send them invoices, transfer funds to them, and get notified when the transaction is finished. There is also an option of splitting bills when you take a ride or have dinner as a party, but paying each for themselves. In fact, Venmo is advertised as the app for payments between people who trust each other.

Every transaction requires a comment, and that is published to your inner circle of friends. You can set up the visibility of your posts, making them available for yourself only, for your friends, or for everyone around (not recommended, unless your name is Gatsby).

There is even more to Venmo: you can have its physical card powered by MasterCard and use it for your offline shopping, with all the bonuses you have for using Venmo on your phone.

Features 4/5

Alas, Venmo is only an American enterprise so far, only legal in the USA (unlike PayPal) and accepted by fewer businesses than PayPal. It’s rather a cash analog for private transactions. It only accepts American phone numbers as ID’s, and only connects cards issued by American banks. That’s acceptable because the app would need to adjust to other countries’ laws, and we already have PayPal for that.

In-app purchases 5/5

Like most financial apps that let you make online payments, this one is completely free. You are only charged a 3% fee for making payments from your credit cards. Using debit cards or Venmo account is free at all. In addition, it shows no ads except for those of its own features you should discover.

Conclusion

Venmo is a “colloquial” version of PayPal, the one meant to replace cash in private transactions. You can use both with the same set of credit and debit cards, using PayPal for international transactions and Venmo for domestic ones, especially within your friends’ party.

• Graphics 5
• Gameplay 5
• Controls 4
• Replay Value 5

Pros

Easy to register and start using;
High security and privacy level;
Connects with debit and credit cards;
Great for sharing and splitting bills;
Constant updates and fixes.

Cons

Only works in the US;
Accepted by fewer businesses than PayPal;
Social network elements may seem excessive.