Newbie Question
 

DELETED

I've been looking into it and found a cpl things I don't like - they reserve the right to voice/sms spam your phone with ads and they may do a hard pull

If it does work as claimed, I've been considering getting a pair of burner phones and givingit a shot. No way I'm giving them my real #

Get a Google Voice number.

The rhetorical question is, will individual banks treat "Venmo Payments" as a cash advance rather than a charge?

I'm guessing people that have set their CA limit to $0 on their credit cards have little to lose?

I have a venmo account and in the process of getting a new card - but i'll give this a try and report back and let you know what it comes out as.

Thanks, iluvthsgam, and welcome to FlyerTalk! I eagerly await your report :)

this requires an invite code. If somebody sends me one, I will be the guinea pig.

Their faq states that the max withdrawal per month is $500. Churners would best stick to shiny golden pieces.

However, I'm quite taken with this service. If you have an iphone or android phone, I encourage you to download the app. It's very useful, even if you don't already have an account.

invitation code
 

If anyone has an extra invitation code, please send me a PM. I'd love to sign up for Venmo.

Be careful your account is not FDIC insured. Here today gone tomorrow!!! You might want to do a little research first.

Great, just one more deal that some have already been using PRUDENTLY that will now be destroyed within a month by hordes of moochers.

There is a reason it hasn't shown up before on FT Ben, this is the wrong forum to publicize a very fragile deal.

What's the over/under on when Venmo shuts off the spigot?

I'll take by Jan 7th.

A great example of mooching in action. One post, asking for a freebie.

It doesn't matter what you set your cash advance limit to. Banks aren't obligated to not process a cash advance if your limit is zero and credit card charges can and are recategorized by your bank without regard to your cash advance limit.

It's been discussed many times.

But since this is going to die a quick death, PM your email address to me and I'll send you an invite.

With such a small monthly limit ... Not sure it will die that quickly.

Have you used the service?
Have you confirmed the information you are posting?

I'd be more worried about what QL mentioned, this isn't a bank account and Venmo isn't too big to fail like PayPal is.

I do not have an account so I can only go off of what their website/others say. But yes, my biggest fear would be like what QL mentioned and that if they go under, You might be saying goodbye to your money you have invested.

Unfortunately when someone tries to warn about would could happen they are accused of wanting the deal all for themselves. Some don’t care what happens as long as them make their buck or get their referrals. Please remember this is a very small startup company. If this company gets exploited the way the mint does it will not last a week.

I wonder if anyone really cares.

This actually looks really handy for all the times I go out to dinner with friends.. I hope it doesn't die :)

Actually it does matter about setting your cash advance limit to zero.

Search for the threads about FT'ers that were able to fund a Citi Savings/Checking account with credit cards that had a cash advance limit above $0 and Citi treating the funding of the account as a cash advance.

Hence the reason for my commentary/question.

Venmo is a small company and they will not let you use your cc for funding which is very small anyway.

My account was suspended after I got this email:

Actually it doesn't matter and telling me about someone who was charged a cash advance fee when they had a cash advance limit > 0 is irrelevant.

If you search the threads for people who had set their cash advance fee to $0 and were still charged a cash advance fee you would be searching for something relevant.

One more time, the bank isn't constrained in the slightest by you having a cash advance limit of $0, they are free to give you cash advances or charge you cash advance fees for transactions that are quasi-cash transactions.

So I got invited to Venmo a week ago, and was very excited about it. I started accepting payments on it for my small company, and encouraged my clients and friends to join it. It seemed really cool, allowing customers to pay with their cellphones, or by credit card. But my company doesn't have very much liquidity, what I get paid I use to pay my provider etc. So cash flow is very important.

Being careful, before I accepted payments, I made sure that my bank account was properly linked. I then accepted payments and immediately tried to withdraw those funds to my bank account. Then, my clients received e-mails from Venmo telling them to prove their identity, and they froze my account. Myself and all my clients have to provide a ridiculous amount of information and worst of all we have to sign a legally binding document asserting that we didn't violate the Terms of Service and other things. The problem with this is two-fold. One, my clients don't know the law and won't sign a legal document like this. And two, the TOS, are literally of book length, and until I seek legal counsel I can't sign a document of that nature myself. In fact, if you read the TOS you would likely never use their service, it says that they can confiscate $2500 of your funds for little or no reason with no recourse.

So I have about $15,000 in frozen funds. It says pending to my bank account, it has said this for a while, but my clients can't pay me and it tells them that I'm frozen. I need these funds to pay my bills, because I already provided the product to my clients, who to no fault of their own, already paid. While the TOS are Orwellian, if they confiscated 2500, and let me keep the rest while things are pending, at least I'd be able to pay off my bills. But right now they are violating their own TOS.

I'd advice EVERYONE, to stay away from venmo until these types of issues are resolved. At least be very careful with the funds you put in. I am racking up credit card interest and this is turning out to be very expensive.

I will update you if things change, I'm not just a hater, I actually liked this service, until they stole all my money.

Please keep us posted in how this plays out.

This sounded like a good service until the last couple of posts! Glad I read the whole thread -- and sorry for the problems some of you are having.

If you run a business (well, even with personal finances), you can't afford to not read the T&C of anything you touch. Period! You will run into bankruptcy in no time!

Venmo says that it is a small operation intended for small amounts of money and by small they mean the cost of splitting a meal or a movie between friends ($10-15)!

When you get close to their limit you get flagged. In your case you were big time abusive of their system. They can't eat the cost of the CC transactions.

I agree that what they request to undo the freeze is a joke. In your case the fiasco is huge as you can't ask them to reverse the payments since you already provided the goods (it will be hard to get paid for the stuff you already provided). I think you should ask them to pay their expenses about 3-4% of the total and release the money to your bank.

I feel bad for you but you can only blame yourself.

Thanks for the post. Was thinking about using this service, but may second guess it now.

Does anyone have a recent experience with this?

Can you say banned? :D

I think they banned us all plus anybody who ever sent or received money from one of us.

my experience with venmo
 

Excellent so far my experience with venmo is. I have been using this program for about 4 months now and have no trouble at all. But then, I am quite modest, not any more than $200 per month and pay to real people not to my pocket. :):)

In my experience, VENMO is fast and reliable. Unlike ~10 days for (wallet to bank acct) transaction in Xipwire, Venmo transaction is much faster; 2~3 days usually.

Edit: they locked my account, so there is no more invite available.. no matter what, how careful you were using them, in the long run, they ban all your accounts eventually.

What do you use Venmo for? I'm interested in using it to split rent and utilities, but after reading some people's experiences, it sounds like Venmo doesn't like big charges. Although their website states that you can use it to split rent, I'm afraid because of the amount (rent is usually big even when split), it could be a reason for them to ban you.

OK - so I've been using Venmo for a few months. I'm surprised there hasn't been more traffic in this forum about it. It's definitely got some problems, but hey, it provides free miles!

Initially, I couldn't get into the beta. But I found a way around that, which is to download the iPhone app, and then you can sign up within the app - no beta restrictions.

Next, I don't really know what the limit is, but it's certainly useful to get SOME miles, and it's also helpful in those situations where you need X amount of charges per month. You can just keep sending your friend/spouse/relative a few dollars here and there and rack up the transactions.

I saw a mention above about fees and ACH and such. For the record, for me:

-No fees

-ACH is only for deposit

-All inputs to the system are by credit card

I assume that'll have to change one day, but in the early days, I always make sure to take advantage, hard.

To me, Venmo is a race: how can I max it out for miles, yet not overdo it and run into problems, all before the inevitable fees start rolling in?

One more note: part of their shtick is that you can take money from friends based on some mysterious "trust" mechanism. To demonstrate that, you can take $1 from Venmo after you get rolling. You also get $1 for each friend you refer, who signs up. Not much, but it's something.

Let me say in advance, while I'm all about referral bonuses, the $1 on this one doesn't interest me enough to overcome the time involved. So if you're looking for a referral, find someone else in this thread, and thanks for the thought!

I'm pretty sure the max charge is $999. Just stay well short of that, and space your rent payments out twice a month if need be.

I think there's a monthly max, but I haven't had a problem so far.

Did you ever think the less traffic it gets the longer it will last?

Not my MO. I learn a lot here, and I have to add what I can.

I'd rather FTers get it while it lasts, instead of others.

Got an email from these guys today telling me that ACH deposits will now happen overnight.

All I can glean from that is that they want me to pull my money out, and not keep it there to send to others. Fine!

Anyone know how to get all of my contacts out of the iPhone app?

When you set it up, it automatically imports your contacts. I hit "cancel" as it was going, but not soon enough. I hate that there was no option "Should we import your contacts?"

Anyway, I've got hundreds of contacts in there, all with "invite" buttons on their info. I'll clearly never invite, pay, or receive from 99% of them, so it's actually more useless than building them manually.

But I can't figure out how to delete - I might try deleting the app, reinstalling, and getting ready to hit "cancel" as fast as possible.

.....

To send an invite, the member needs your email address. I'm happy to do it if you PM me. But I'm happy to spread the wealth also.