As one of the most popular payment apps in the United States, Venmo has become the default way for millions of Americans to buy a concert ticket of Craigslist or pay a friend back for dinner. Owned by PayPal, Venmo has eradicated the need to use cash or carry debit cards as you can send money through your phone by having the Venmo app. Despite its increasing popularity, especially in the U.S., one question still lingers; can you transfer money from Venmo to PayPal?
Mobile-First Service
Unlike PayPal or any other digital payment platform, Venmo is a mobile-first service. It’s designed as an app that you have to install on your mobile phone to enjoy the services. While it’s intended for reasonably small fund transfers, it also has some social network aspect to it in which users can offer comments on basically every transaction, something that may be frustrating to some of us.
In essence, Venmo is partly a digital wallet and partly a social media feed. The platform gives you the option to make the transaction public, whereby friends can make comments on the transaction. So imagine sending money to your roommate, and he makes it public so that you and your friends can comment on it! This has undoubtedly elated Venmo’s popularity, and it’s now common to hear a friend telling you to “Venmo him.”
Using Venmo and PayPal
Unlike PayPal, one major downside of using Venmo is that it’s only limited to within the United States. In other words, it’s practically impossible to send money across nations since Venmo is currently only available to users within the United States.
This gives PayPal an upper hand. As one of the first payment services and digital wallets, PayPal has dominated the cash app markets for over a decade. It remains one of the most recognized ways of sending money both locally and internationally.
PayPal has expanded its service base to become an almost bank-like platform that not only allows you to send money and pay for products but can also offer loans, among other business products.
What’s the Difference between Venmo and PayPal?
Given that PayPal owns Venmo, we can say that there are a lot of similarities between these two platforms. The platforms are almost the same and very easy to use and can both securely facilitate financial transactions between friends or business partners.
The main difference, however, is that PayPal has grown enormously that it offers a whole load of financial services and products that it’s more of a bank than a payment app. With PayPal, you can transfer huge amounts of money across the globe, something that’s not possible with Venmo.
So Can You Transfer Money from Venmo to PayPal?
As we’ve noted earlier, Venmo is currently only available to users within the United States. This hinders its popularity on an international stage. So what can you do if you say you wanted to send money to a friend outside the U.S.? Well, you’ve probably thought of transferring money from your Venmo account to your PayPal account then send it to your aforementioned friend. But is it possible?
Although Venmo is a subsidiary to PayPal, it’s impossible to send money directly from your Venmo account to your PayPal account or someone else’s PayPal account for that matter. The best solution here is to transfer money from your Venmo account to your bank account, then attach the same bank account to your PayPal account and then send it to your PayPal account.
There’s no doubt that both Venmo and PayPal are important digital platforms that we all use to make money transactions. While Venmo is a great platform to send and receive money from friends and relatives, it still has the shortcoming of being only available within the United States.
On the other hand, PayPal is an international platform that has grown to become more of a bank than a cash app. Want to buy products from a merchant in China? No problem, PayPal will be of great help. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to transfer money from Venmo to PayPal. You’ll have to transfer the amount to your bank account and then from your bank account to your PayPal account.
