Need to send your friend some money for a group vacation, or your grandchild a cashless transfer for their birthday? If you’re in the US, you might be thinking of using the Venmo app. 

It’s a popular option for a reason: Venmo makes sending money to family and friends easy and even fun with a social feed that lets you follow transactions between your friends. But is it safe? 

Firstly, Venmo isn’t a scam app: it’s a legitimate business, with a 4.9/5 rating on the Apple App Store from over 15 million ratings and a 4.4 star rating on Google Play Store from over 900,000 reviews (with over 50 million downloads). 

And it’s safe to use, too, provided you’re making payments to people you know. But you should be aware that paying strangers is riskier, and that scammers can impersonate both Venmo itself and your friends on the platform. 

Here’s how to use it safely, and spot the scams that put your money at risk.

What is Venmo and how does it work?

Venmo is a US-only peer-to-peer payment app owned by PayPal. Using Venmo, you can instantly and directly send other Venmo users money. 

You can also:

  • Send gift cards from brands including Amazon, Starbucks, and Doordash
  • Split group payments by creating groups with your peers, adding expenses, and settling up
  • Pay online and in-person
  • Move money from and to your bank account
  • Get your paycheck sent right to your Venmo account (up to 2 days early)

Venmo tries to make all this fun: you can attach messages (including emojis) to payments, and a social feed, which enables you to see what payments your peers are making (and vice versa). 

Is Venmo safe to use with strangers?

The Venmo app is built for moving money between people who already know each other, not for strangers. In practice, though, many people use it to pay strangers selling items online. 

Sellers on Facebook Marketplace will often ask buyers to pay via Venmo. It isn’t a built-in option like Meta Pay, so you’ll have to agree to it off-platform, usually in a Facebook Messenger thread.

This isn’t necessarily a red-flag request: plenty of legitimate sellers prefer Venmo for its lack of fees. But when a seller refuses to use a protected option (Meta Pay, PayPal Goods & Services) when one’s available, you could have cause for concern.

The problem is that Venmo personal payments carry no buyer protection by default and can’t be reversed once accepted. If you pay a stranger without buyer protection and  receive the wrong item, a damaged item, or nothing at all, you won’t be able to get your money back.

How to protect personal payments on Venmo

Payments to approved business accounts are automatically protected. To confirm they’re approved, look for “Eligible items covered by Purchase Protection” under the pay button.

If you’re paying a personal Venmo account page, however, your payment won’t be covered by Venmo’s Purchase Protection Program(cửa sổ mới) unless you tag it as a purchase. (Note: this makes the coverage possible, not automatic: see Venmo’s Purchase Protection Eligibility guidelines(cửa sổ mới).)

To tag your transaction: tap the toggle shown below the payment method to confirm it’s a purchase.

This incurs a 2.99% fee for the recipient, which won’t be refunded to them if they have to refund the sender. Some sellers may use this as an excuse to discourage you from adding this fee. 

Be wary if they do: Purchase Protection protects sellers from being scammed by buyers too, provided the seller can produce proof of shipment and delivery. 

How to spot scams on Venmo

Once you’ve signed up to Venmo, you might be targeted by scams, as Venmo itself acknowledges(cửa sổ mới). Here are three scams Venmo flags, and how to protect yourself.

An email or text saying you’ve won money through Venmo

This message will include a phishing link, which you shouldn’t click.

Never enter Venmo login information outside of Venmo.com(cửa sổ mới) and the Venmo app, and never share account information on social media, except through Venmo’s official accounts: @Venmo and @VenmoSupport on X/Twitter, @Venmo on Instagram, and @Venmo on Facebook.

A call from Venmo (which isn’t from Venmo)

Under some pretext, the caller asks you to make a payment, or share a two-factor authentication code that’s been sent to your phone. 

Never share your Venmo verification code. Venmo states that they will never ask for your verification code on a call, ask to access your device remotely, or to send money to another account. 

A scammer impersonates a friend on Venmo

You get an unusual (often time-sensitive) payment or request for money from someone who looks like your friend.

Double-check that it’s actually them. A scammer can copy a username, profile picture, and social feed details to seem credible. Check their profile’s public transaction history, and, if still in doubt, reach out to your friend outside Venmo to verify. 

How to use Venmo safely

Follow these guidelines to make sure Venmo is a safe place to buy, sell, and transfer money.

  • Tag any purchases made via personal Venmo accounts as purchases to ensure you’re covered by Purchase Protection
  • Set transaction visibility to private so that not even friends, including potential scammers posing as your friends, can see them on their feed. Following privacy issues reported by The Verge in May 2026(cửa sổ mới), new users are set to see only friends’ activities by default, but this doesn’t guard against impersonators.
  • Verify identities through a second channel before paying, including anyone who’s unfamiliar, and anyone who is familiar but acting unusually

Beyond your behavior, you can close remaining gaps and minimize any potential damage by installing these tools on your devices:

  • A password manager to generate and store a strong, unique password for your account, so a breach on another site doesn’t hand attackers a working password to all of your online accounts
  • An email alias generator to create an individual email address to register with Venmo. It forwards Venmo mail to your main inbox, and protects your real address if Venmo gets breached
  • A VPN(cửa sổ mới) to encrypt your connection when you’re sending money over public WiFi, keeping your session private from prying eyes

Secure your passwords and privacy with Proton

Proton was founded to make the internet safer. Our products make it harder for scammers to steal your credentials and personal information.They also make it easier to use the internet safely and protect your online accounts.

With our free password manager Proton Pass you can:

  • Generate a strong, unique password for every account you use (including Venmo): if one of your passwords leaks, they won’t all leak 
  • Set up an email alias for Venmo: if they ever get breached, the attackers won’t have the keys to your primary inbox
  • Ensure your login credentials aren’t autofilled on fake Venmo pages: Proton Pass autofills logins only on the websites it recognizes, so it won’t hand your password to a domain that isn’t venmo.com

Proton VPN(cửa sổ mới) won’t stop the scams listed by Venmo, but it keeps you safer online, encrypting your connection whenever you’re using Venmo or any other app, blocking ads and malware trackers.  

Both Proton Pass and Proton VPN are protected by zero-access encryption that means not even Proton can access your passwords. 

Venmo can be as safe as you make it. Pair smart habits with tools that protect your credentials and your connection, and you can send payments without paying an undue price.