Want to set up automatic payments on your Venmo account? Continue reading this article to learn whether that’s possible and what workarounds are available, if at all.
As a Venmo user, you’ve probably asked the question,
Can you set up automatic payments on Venmo?
No, Venmo doesn’t offer automatic payments as an option to its users. The feature might be added in the future but it isn’t available for now.
However, before you go searching for the next shiny payment app, you’ll be interested to know that Venmo experimented with a feature in the past that would’ve made recurring payments less of an issue when using the app.
We’ll explain this and much more in the article, so stick around to learn more.
Reasons You’d Want to Automate Your Venmo Payments
There are numerous reasons you’d want to automate payments on your Venmo account. Some of them might include:
1. To Eliminate the Payment Process Altogether
Venmo offers a convenient way for users to pay friends or businesses who use the app. The process is as follows:
- Launch the Venmo app
- Navigate to the bottom and click on the “Pay or Request” button on the homepage
- Type in the username, phone number, or email of the recipient of the funds you’re sending into the field that pops up
- When the user shows up, click on them to confirm they’re who you’d like to send the funds to
- Enter the amount you intend on sending to the recipient and include a reason for payment in the “What It’s For” field (Optional)
- Click the “Pay” button at the bottom of the screen
- Select your preferred payment option from available payment options. Now, you’ve successfully sent the money
Although the process is quick, it’s more convenient to automate payments you’ll be sending to other Venmo users on a recurrent basis than repeating the above steps every time.
2. To Schedule Recurring Payments
You might have recurrent payments that you’ll be making on specific days. Some examples include:
- Recurring Bill: If your landlord uses Venmo, automating your monthly rent payments would be more convenient.
- Refund in Installments: If you owe a large sum to a fellow Venmo user, you might agree to make the payment in installments. Having the option of scheduling these payments would make things easier.
- Family Responsibility: You may have a younger sibling who uses Venmo and to who you send money every month.
Why Doesn’t Venmo Support Automatic Payments?
Venmo doesn’t explain why it hasn’t given users the option of setting up automatic payments on the app. As such, all we can do is speculate.
One possible reason is that Venmo can’t cancel payments. Once you send a payment and Venmo sends a request to your bank instructing it to debit your account, that’s it! Venmo can’t cancel the payment once initiated.
So, if, for example, you set up an automatic payment for a debt owed but forget to cancel the payments once you’ve repaid the debt in full, the only way you’d get your money back is by asking the recipient for a refund.
Getting a refund from a trusted friend is one thing, but you could be in for a headache if you don’t know the other party too well.
Venmo’s lack of an automatic payment feature is unfortunate because competitor apps like Wise, Google Pay, and PayPal offer this feature to their user base.
Venmo “Trust”
In the past, Venmo experimented with a feature that had the potential to stand in for automated payments called “Trust.”
The Trust feature was meant for use between friends, not strangers, and worked by letting one Venmo user take funds owed to them from another user’s Venmo balance without getting the owing user’s permission. So, for example, regulars at a restaurant could trust it to take the exact amount of their food bill from their Venmo balance and simply get up and leave after eating.
Unfortunately, this feature never took off and has been shelved by Venmo.
An Alternative
If you really can’t do without the automatic payment feature, you could consider making those payments using PayPal. PayPal is Venmo’s parent company, so you won’t have to go very far.
However, you’ll have to contend with PayPal’s higher transaction fees if you go with this option.
Final Words
Automated payments are super convenient when settling recurring expenses like rent or similar bills. You can simply set them and forget them; hence, never miss a payment as long as your account has funds.
It isn’t possible to set up automatic payments on your Venmo account at the moment.
Even though you can quickly make payments to other Venmo users via the app, it’d be more convenient to cut out the process altogether when paying a recipient on a recurring basis.
Although Venmo’s experiment with the Trust feature shows the company’s willingness to provide users with more convenient ways to make payments, the experiment never took off.
Therefore, you’ll have to make do with manually paying your recipients on a per transaction basis.
