Venmo’s intriguing transformation from popular peer-to-peer payments app to Apple Pay competitor is going to take some time — a long time, actually, if you consider PayPal’s progress so far.
Starting today, PayPal tells us “a small subset of Venmo users” can now pay for stuff with Venmo within two iOS apps, event ticketing service Gametime and meal delivery service Munchery. That means, for the majority of users, Venmo will remain an app for just sending money to friends — for now.
A PayPal spokesperson, however, promises that Venmo is “going to be inviting additional people regularly via email.”
Our goal is to ramp up significantly every month to a large number of users, however, I can’t confirm whether it will be open to all users before the general public launch.
What it’s like paying with Venmo
Above: Buying a ticket with Venmo
Image Credit: PayPal
Venmo users with access to the new payments feature “will either get an e-mail notification (if they opted in on e-mail updates), or they’ll see the “Purchases” section within the left dropdown menu within the Venmo app and they’ll also see a Venmo button as a payment option within the Munchery and Gametime app.”
When asked if Venmo will ever be excepted in-store at physical retailers, wherever PayPal is expected, the spokesperson offered the following response:
With this new feature, it definitely opens up the Venmo user base to PayPal’s list of merchants, however, for the beta launch, Venmo will be a payment option within mobile apps only.
What we’re interested to see is the breakthrough of social commerce that will happen across the Venmo social network, much different than any other social network that exists today.