SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

Tom Antion discusses the pros and cons of using Venmo, particularly for those unfamiliar with the platform. He recently had to use Venmo to purchase from a vendor who only accepted it, prompting him to explore the service.
Pros of Venmo:
• Widespread usage: Over 100 million users.
• Free for personal use.
• Convenient for splitting bills, sending/receiving money, and online/in-person payments.
• Social feed: Users can share their transactions (can be a pro or con).
• Debit and credit cards (with associated fees).
• Teen accounts with parental controls.
• Cash-back rewards and early direct deposit for some users.
Cons of Venmo:
• No FDIC insurance: Funds are not protected if Venmo collapses.
• Low transaction limits unless verified.
• Privacy concerns with the social feed.
• Fees for instant transfers and credit card usage.
• Target for scammers: Safer to use only with known individuals or trusted vendors.
• No interest on balances.
• No donation receipts from Venmo itself.
• Limited business functionality and poor CRM integration.
• Mostly U.S.-only, though international expansion may be underway.
Tom closes by encouraging listeners to research more about Venmo and to consider his digital marketing mentor program.

===

Episode 989 – Venmo Pros Cons
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 989 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about the pros and cons of a service called Venmo. You may have heard of it. Us older farts maybe haven't heard of it that much, but a lot of younger people use it. But we're going to talk about the pros and cons today. I hope you didn't miss episode 988. That was Phone Tips, part of our ongoing series on making you lightning fast on your phones. Just go to the website and search on the page. It's usually like control or command F for the word phone. And if you want to be lightning fast on your phone. Just work some of these tips in every day. Oh my God, you'll be lightning fast. And then also check out our, uh, modern shopping cart series at episode 987, 986 and 985. And of course, any time you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. All right. And pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my school. IMTCVA.org. It's the only licensed, dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world. It's licensed to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to live in Virginia because it's distance learning and it's high quality distance learning.

[00:01:49] Okay, so here's the deal. Not too long ago, I had to buy something from an online vendor who I kind of trusted knew his reputation, but he only accepts Venmo. And, Huh? You know, there's no sense trying to talk people into stuff. You know, some of these small time vendors, you know, that's what they know. And they don't want a big shopping cart system, and they don't want all kinds of stuff. They just want to sell a little bit of their stuff. And I get that not everybody wants to be, uh, an online, you know, master. So anyway, I had to sign up for Venmo, and I've known about it for years, but just never had a reason to fool with it. And I was also aware of some of the security concerns that I'll talk about in today's episode. Anyway, today we're going to talk about the pros and cons. So let's start with the pros. Well they've got 100 million users. So it's a substantial and a real entity. It's not a fly by night thing. And it's been around for a while and it's free for personal stuff. You know, you can just sign up for the the app and be right on your way there. What it can do is you can send, send and receive money easily between people. You can buy stuff online. You can, uh, I guess you can.

[00:03:14] Yeah, you can buy stuff in person too. If you're standing there with a person that's got it, you can split bills. You know how people, you know, trying to divvy up bills when they go out as a group, that kind of stuff. So, it's used a lot for that kind of stuff. And it has what they call a social feed. Now, this is in the pro and the con column, right? I have no idea why people would want to use this, this feature, but you can allow a group of people I guess there might be reasons for this, but I'm not the kind of person that participates in this kind of stuff, but you can allow everybody else to see your transactions, what you're buying and who you're buying from and who you're giving money to and who you're getting money from. Uh, I can't imagine that I would ever want to do that, but, uh, It's popular. Some people are finding ways to use it. Some people say, well, it's a way to discover deals. Hey, my buddy got a deal from this one place, and so maybe I'll go check it out and get a deal, you know? So I guess it could be, but I don't want any part of it. Okay. They also have debit and credit cards you can apply for. And those do have fees. I think the credit cards do have fees. And also instant transfers of money has a little fee with it.

[00:04:35] But let's see. Oh, they also have teen accounts. So you can start teaching your teens about money, but you can have parental controls over what's going on. So if you're if your kid is overpaying for crack, well, you know, you got to let them know. Sit them down and talk to them. Hey, you need to to have several vendors working again. No. I'm kidding. Stay away from crack. Uh, let's see what else. Some of the stuff they have, uh, cash back rewards, uh, you know, tied to it and some. And I don't know a thing about this because I never got a paycheck from anybody, but. But you can get early direct deposit in some places, you know, for your paycheck. So that I guess that could be a con. But I hope the people out there are getting away from paychecks and making a fortune online. That's my job, is to help you. Okay. So that's some of the pros of it. Now the cons, well, see, you can collect money up in your your Venmo account, but there's no FDIC insurance now okay. They're owned by PayPal. Paypal is probably not going under anytime soon. But if it did or if there was some collapse, there's no I mean, even if there was a collapse, I guess nobody would FDIC would go broke. But anyway, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or company, whatever it is, but it doesn't have any of that.

[00:06:06] So if there's something goes wrong. You're out. S O L. Also, con might be for you that they limit your transaction amount. It's fairly low if you are not verified. And if you get verified, it's you know, it's quite a bit of money. So I don't think that that could stop you. Now privacy is one of the cons, especially if you use that social media thing, everybody that you have tied into it and, you know, you might maybe you think they're friends and maybe they really aren't. You never know. But I don't I don't want people looking at all the stuff I buy. Uh, let's see fees. Like I said, um, in instant transfers, but I'm not sure how that works yet, because I've only I haven't made instant transfers yet. Uh, but also using the credit card has fees now. Security. Well, this is the one I've always heard since the beginning is that, you know, Venmo is very popular, but it's targeted by scammers. You got to be careful who you're dealing with. A lot of people say only do business or send money to people that you really know. You know, friends and family and trusted vendors because a lot of lot of this, these kinds of things are targeted by scammers. Let's see on the money that you have in there. There's no interest to cruise on it. So if you build up money in there, you don't get any interest. They don't they won't give you let's say you make a donation to a charity.

[00:07:40] They won't give you a receipt. You got to get it from the charity. You know, I don't know how much that applies to most people. And it doesn't apparently play well with, you know, CRM systems. You know, your customer relationship management system. So if you're using it in business now, they do have a business thing that I just saw is coming about. And I also did see one of the cons I forgot to write down here is this has previously only been available for US transactions, United States. But I thought I saw that they're expanding that to other countries. So that's something you'll have to watch for if you decide to, to do this. So so that's my little my little minuscule experience with Venmo. But there's lots about it online if you're thinking about doing it or if you have a need to do it, or if you like, some of those pros like to have your buddies all know what you're buying, okay, go go for it. Or the teen accounts. That kind of makes sense. If you have teens, it's a good way to, uh, to, uh, they all know about it, but you can monitor what's going on, especially those crack, you know, those crack deals. Um, so anyway, uh, that's Venmo, so check it out. Also, check out my mentor program. GreatinternetmarketingTraining.com. And I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.