Typecast for P2P: How Venmo and Cash App Are Expanding Beyond Paying Friends and Family

Over the past decade, PayPal-owned Venmo has gained extreme popularity as the fun, fast, easy, and social person-to-person payments platform. It is a sign of success when your brand becomes an everyday verb—“Venmo” is now synonymous with paying other people. Venmo pioneered easily paying friends and family digitally. (In other words, not by cash or checks.) Block launched a similar P2P payment service, Cash App, in 2013. Users can send or receive money with just their Venmo or Cash App username, mobile number, or email address. The social nature and cute emojis help eliminate the awkwardness of asking people to pay you back or to split payments. 

For years, Venmo and Cash App have been trying to broaden beyond P2P payments, especially into in-store and online payments. Venmo and Cash App allow users to pay for in-store purchases by scanning the app’s QR code and checking out online with Pay with Venmo or Cash App Pay. Venmo and Cash App also introduced debit cards several years ago to make it easier for users to use their account balances for purchases at any brick-and-mortar or online retailer that accepts Mastercard and Visa. Yet most Venmo and Cash App users have not taken to using the apps beyond paying other people. 

This note looks at the efforts to drive Venmo and Cash App users toward everyday payments beyond sending money to friends and family. Venmo and Cash App appear to have been boxed in by their own success. Now they’re trying to break out.