[habosa]

Question: does anyone know how/if Venmo makes money or is it just a loss-leader for Braintree/PayPal?

I use it for thousands of dollars of transactions a year but I have never paid a penny in fees or seen an ad. People claim that Venmo acts as a bank and invests my carried balance but I can't imagine that's lucrative enough to pay all the bills.

[ahstilde]

Venmo, I believe, invests the money it holds. This is why it takes 3 days to cash out.

[habosa]

I tend to get cashouts in 24h now.

[stevesearer]

They also charge a 3% fee on money sent using a credit card. Many of my friends just have a balance sitting in their Venmo account because they use it so often to pay for things from rent to groceries to splitting a bill at a restaurant. No idea of the metrics of how much can be made from the interest on those balances though.

[ennuihenry]

They don't make the 3%, probably like a 1% spread after interchange fees. But they have a huge team, lots of software developers. So they most likely don't make a profit.

[sushid]

I believe they had a series of ads on NYC subway stations a year or two ago. Not sure if they've done anything since.

[b1naryth1ef]

They don't.