Peer-to-peer payment apps have changed how people handle the smaller financial exchanges that used to involve cash, bank transfers, or settling up later.

Venmo and Cash App let users pay friends back for dinner, split household expenses, reimburse someone for a purchase, or send money to a service provider directly from their phones. But these transactions generate more than a simple record of money changing hands. They can leave behind details about who you know, where you spend, what you buy, and how you manage your finances. How much of that information stays private depends partly on which app you use and how each company collects, shares, and retains your data.

That convenience comes with a trade-off. Paymen services handle sensitive financial information, and the details surrounding a transaction can reveal more than you might expect. Venmo has also made payments social, allowing users to share activity with friends or, depending on their settings, the public.

Both services have faced privacy and security concerns. Comparing what they collect, where that information goes, and how long they keep it can help you decide which one better fits your needs. These details can become part of your wider digital footprint(ventana nueva).

What Venmo and Cash App know about you

Venmo’s most unusual privacy decision was making transactions public by default for years. Other users could see the names involved, the payment time, and any note attached to it.

In 2018, privacy researcher Hang Do Thi Duc collected roughly 208 million publicly available Venmo transactions from a single year. By connecting users and reading payment notes, she pieced together details about their lives, including personal relationships, eating habits, and payments made to a California marijuana dealer. Anyone using the service could see the activity.

The risks became clear again in 2021. After The New York Times reported that President Joe Biden used Venmo to send money to his grandchildren, BuzzFeed reporters found his account in less than ten minutes. His payments were private, but his friends list was public. Reporters used it to identify people connected to him. Venmo subsequently added an option to make friends lists private.

Venmo has since removed its global public feed, but it still has a social feed. Individual transactions can be set to Public, Friends Only, or Private. Public payments can reveal the names involved, the note, and the timestamp to anyone online.

Cash App doesn’t have a comparable social feed, so users can’t browse other people’s payment activity in the same way. It still collects substantial information, including device details, IP addresses, activity within the app, and potentially precise location data. It can also receive information from credit and fraud companies, merchants, advertisers, and data brokers.

Cash App says information from some third-party sources may include inferred characteristics, advertising segments, interests, and preferences. If you use a Cash App Card, the service can also collect information about purchases made with it. In 2026, Cash App began using some of this information, alongside app activity and general location, to personalize advertising for other brands. Users can opt out.

Where your payment data goes

Venmo is owned by PayPal. Its privacy policy says information can be shared with PayPal and other companies under its control. Venmo activity may also be associated with information from other PayPal services, including PayPal and PayPal Honey, to personalize content and offers.

Venmo’s public transaction history also created the risk of automated collection. Even after the global feed was removed, the visibility of older payments is worth checking.

Cash App is owned by Block, formerly known as Square. Depending on how you use the service, Cash App says it may share information with other Block companies, financial partners, and advertising companies. Its advertising system can share interest categories, masked identifiers, and device information with advertising technology companies to personalize ads outside the app. Users can opt out.

Block has also faced problems with internal access to customer information. In 2022, it disclosed that a former employee downloaded reports(ventana nueva) containing Cash App Investing customer data after leaving the company. The reports included full names and brokerage account numbers. For some customers, they also contained portfolio values, holdings, and stock-trading activity. Block contacted approximately 8.2 million current and former customers about the incident. 

In January 2025, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered(ventana nueva) Block to pay up to $120 million in consumer redress and a $55 million penalty over Cash App’s handling of fraud and unauthorized transactions. The CFPB cited weak security, inadequate investigations, and scammers impersonating Cash App support. The order required 24-hour live-person customer service and improved investigations.

Can you access or delete your payment app data?

Both services let users request personal information, but their retention and deletion processes differ.

Venmo provides an online privacy request system that lets you choose which categories of information to receive. The company says requests usually arrive within one or two days, although they can take up to 30 days. You can also change the privacy settings on older transactions, making past payments private if they were previously public or visible to friends.

Changing a transaction’s visibility doesn’t delete the underlying information. Venmo says it generally retains information associated with your relationship with the company for as long as you have an account, plus another ten years after it closes. Some records may be kept longer for financial regulations, investigations, or lawsuits. If you want a copy of your data, request it before closing your account. Venmo says a request made afterward may require a government-issued photo ID and a photograph of you holding it.

Cash App also lets users access and delete personal information. Its published figures for 2025 show that it received more than 49,000 access requests, with a median completion time described as nearly instantaneous. It received more than 11,000 deletion requests, with a general completion time of around three days. Like other financial services, Cash App may retain some information when legal or regulatory requirements apply.

On this measure, Cash App has the advantage. Venmo’s stated ten-year retention period after account closure is a significant drawback if you want your information removed from the service.

How to improve your payment app privacy

Whichever app you use, review its privacy and security settings. The controls differ, so the checks aren’t identical.

Venmo

Start by reviewing your transaction visibility and the information associated with your account:

  • Set the default audience for future transactions to Private.
  • Review past transactions and change any that are still Public or Friends Only to Private.
  • Make your friends list private.
  • Disable the setting that allows your profile to appear in other people’s friends lists if you prefer.
  • Review contact syncing.
  • Check your location permissions.
  • Review the banks and cards linked to your account.
  • Check any outside accounts or services connected to Venmo.
  • Look through old payment notes for personal details you no longer want to share.
  • Request a copy of your Venmo data to see what information the company holds.

Cash App

Cash App has fewer social privacy controls to worry about, but there are still several settings worth checking:

  • Review location permissions and turn off precise location if you don’t need it.
  • Opt out of targeted advertising.
  • Review advertising settings related to Cash App Card purchases and shopping activity.
  • Check which contacts the app can access.
  • Review linked banks and cards.
  • Check your account security settings.
  • Request a copy of your Cash App data.
  • If you no longer use the service, close the account rather than simply deleting the app from your phone.

These checks won’t erase records a financial company is legally required to keep, but they can reduce what you share.

Which payment app is more private?

Neither Venmo nor Cash App has a spotless record. Venmo’s social features have exposed payment details and personal connections that users may not have expected to make public. Although the company has improved its privacy controls, users still need to check whether transactions are Public, Friends Only, or Private. Its stated ten-year data retention period after account closure is another concern.

Cash App has its own problems. Its record includes an incident involving Cash App Investing customer information, regulatory action over fraud handling and customer support, and an advertising system that can use purchase and app activity to personalize ads. It does, however, avoid Venmo’s public social feed and reports faster median completion times for data access and deletion requests.

If you have to choose between the two, Cash App comes out ahead in this comparison. That doesn’t make it a private payment service, and it doesn’t remove the need to review its settings. For transactions where privacy matters most, physical cash remains the more private option. It doesn’t create an account history or leave a payment note behind.