This past February, the R.E.L.I.E.F. (Relieving and Embracing Lives Interrupted by Earth’s Forces) Foundation took a trip to Port au Prince, Haiti to assist in the earthquake recovery efforts. The expedition of 126 individuals, led by Pete Groverman and Armando Gutierrez Jr., was one of the largest private aid groups doing work in the country. Over the course of 4 days and 4 nights, R.E.L.I.E.F. was able to donate $1M in medical supplies to Haitian orphanages, shipping over 40,000 lbs. of cargo down to the country (including 4 incubators, which have already saved over 25 lives).
Here, Pete discusses the trip, as well as details of how he used Venmo to easily raise over $48,000 of the total $110,000 raised by the foundation. He simply created a Facebook group promoting the effort and listed the 3-step donation instructions (shown below), and spread the word to a number of friends. This low-effort process resulted in 163 donors sending in over $48,000, or an average of $295/person! Using Venmo, Pete was able to quickly accept funds and begin efficiently mobilizing resources, and was eventually able to create a significant impact in the lives of thousands of Haitian individuals.
Using Venmo to quickly collect donations for your charity is simple. Sign up for Venmo, create a charge link, and spread the word to your friends about how they can donate either by sending a text message or completing the payment online. Like Pete told his friends, “Don’t send a check. It’s so much easier to text a payment!”
At Venmo we give you unrestricted access to your funds, and make it easy to withdraw money into your checking and savings accounts whenever you wish.
Once you have added and verified a bank account, you can withdraw any amount into it at any time. However, the transfer typically takes 3-5 business days and after a few days you may begin to wonder when your transfer will reach your account.
To help alleviate any concerns, we’ve recently added two features:
(1) We’ve added a settings page where you can view the status and details of all your pending and complete bank transfers, including the initial verification deposit we make into your account. Just visit this link: https://venmo.com/account/settings/view-bank-transfers
(2) We’ve also added email notifications to keep you posted about the status of each transfer. A monitoring program will check the status of your request on a daily basis and notify you as soon as the funds are in your account, so hopefully you won’t have to check the bank transfer page very often!
Of course if you have any additional concerns about pending bank transfers or anything else, you can always email us at support@venmo.com
Here’s an easy way to recover your Venmo username on the go if you’ve forgotten it: text “bal” to Venmo at 646.863.9557. The response text will give you your account balance and username. This is handy if you want a friend to pay you and can’t remember your account name. Of course, you can always invoice someone by texting “$__ from [username/phone number]” to Venmo!
Got any questions, comments, or feedback? As always, let us know on Twitter or in our support forum.
Typographical and grammatical errors in correspondence are a great way to tell a recipient that you did not spend much effort or time composing your message. I have been keen to eliminate these errors from any emails, chats, blog posts, or even text messages that I write, and as a way to help enforce this habit I now include in my email signature a link to invoice me if you catch me making a mistake.
Here’s what it looks like:
I used a new feature we have that allows you to create a payment or invoice link to any user page. You can use a simple form to easily create a typo-bounty link of your own with our payment link builder tool. ( I created a short link, charge.kortina.net, and you could also use a Bitly link to pretty this up for your signature: http://bit.ly/charge-kortina.)
Just enter your Venmo username, an amount you would like to be charged, and a note explaining that you are rewarding anyone who catches you making a mistake.
Payment links are pretty flexible–instead of making a link that prompts someone to charge you, you could also make a link asking someone to pay you for something cool you wrote or a service you provided them. We’ll write up some more interesting and detailed examples of payment and invoice links soon, so stay tuned.
Also, let us know if you create a cool payment or invoice link of your own!
Monday, we got a chance to present at Mobile Monday Demo Night, where we shared Venmo with a great crowd and helped the Relief Foundation raise some money for their project to build an orphanage in Haiti.
Here’s a photo we snapped with the winner trophy (which we took home!) and an official press release.
For Immediate Release
Venmo Inc.
27 Jan 2010, 2:17 PM
Philadelphia, PA
On January 25th, Venmo presented at Mobile Monday Mid Atlantic Demo Night, a gathering of the top mobile technology companies in the region.
Venmo won this annual competition by engaging the audience in the most interactive presentation of the evening. The founders, Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail, spent only 2 of their 5 minute presentation explaining the company, which allows anyone to send or collect money by sending a text message. Citing the recent campaign by the Red Cross that engaged thousands of people and raised millions of dollars for relief efforts in Haiti in only a few days, they explained that now anyone can collect money in a similar way via Venmo’s text message payments service.
For the remaining 3 minutes of the presentation, Kortina and Magdon asked the audience to try the product by making live donations to the Relief Foundation, an organization sending a delegate of 120 people to Haiti to build an orphanage. Audience members texted “pay relief 20 to help haiti” to the Venmo number (646.863.9557) and were able to contribute hundreds of dollars in a matter of minutes. In less than a week, the Relief Foundation has raised over $15,000 through Venmo text message donations, $600 of which was raised in the 3 minute demo during the presentation.
In order to engage communities around organizations and businesses accepting Venmo mobile payments, the service also integrates tightly with social networking services like Twitter and Facebook, allowing people, businesses, and charities to share their favorite donations and payments to favorite local spots with their friends on these networks.
To learn more about accepting Venmo as a non-profit or a business, please send an e-mail to info@venmo.com.
We created a Venmo account, /VenmoCares, and anyone can donate by sending a text or web venmo payment. We’re then donating the money here: Unicef donations for Haiti
We have raised $506 so far, just by asking a few of our friends to help out.
Donate on the web to /VenmoCares UNICEF donations.
We want to raise as much more as possible, so please ask all your friends do donate and let them know they can help just by sending a text message. 100% of donations are going to UNICEF. Please help!
Here’s the summary in case you prefer reading to watching the video:
Verifying a Bank Account with Venmo
1. Add your bank account information (account number and routing number) to your Venmo account.
2. Venmo issues a small deposit to your bank account using an ACH transfer, which takes 3-5 business days (so 5-7 actual days) to reach your account.
3. As soon as you see the deposit in your account, confirm the amount on Venmo.com. Once your account is verified, you can request a withdrawal from your Venmo account to your bank account at any time.
Withdrawing Money from Venmo
1. Once you’ve verified your bank account, request a withdrawal from Venmo.
2. Venmo immediately issues an ACH transfer to your bank account for the amount requested. This transfer takes 3-5 business days.
Here’s the annoying part: if you wait until you want to withdraw your funds to verify your bank account information, first you have to wait 3-5 business days for the account verification deposit, then, once you confirm the amount deposited, you have to wait another 3-5 business days for the transfer your requested. That’s a long time, and there’s unfortunately nothing we can do to speed up the ACH process!
So, here’s what we can both do to make this faster:
1. We’re working on a solution that will enable us to instantly verify your bank routing and account numbers, which will cut your cash out time in half! We hope to have this done in January, 2009.
2. Verify your bank account information as soon as possible, even if you have nothing to cash out! This way, when you do cash out, you’ll only have to wait for the ACH transfer of the amount you requested.
3. If you forget to do (2) before you decide you want to cash out, email us to schedule a call and we’ll confirm your bank account information over the phone.
Why do you need to “verify” my bank account at all?
Good question. Suppose we did not verify your bank account, and you made a typo when you entered your account information. Then, you request a withdrawal of $100, and we transfer it to the bank account you entered with a typo–someone else would get your $100 in their account! Neither of us wants that (though, it might make someone else’s day), so that’s why we verify all bank accounts before allowing withdrawals to them.
So, we’ll keep working on speeding up the verification process, and in the mean time, please make sure to verify your banking details as soon as you can.
We’ve been working hard at listening to your feedback and adding new features that make Venmo easier to use. Rejoice– we’re getting closer to being able to completely eliminate cash from our lives.
Alert preferences- In your account settings, you can now control how often you receive notifications from Venmo– weekly transaction summaries, payment notifications, and Fav notifications.
Invite your friends- You can now invite up to 10 friends to Venmo. Give the gift of Venmo to people who you frequently exchange money with– roommates, friends, and family members!
Tweet your payments- Connect to Twitter, and post your Venmo payments automatically to Twitter by adding “#tw” at the end of each message you send to Venmo. Use our Twitter Connect to share payments, invoice your friends who owe you money, and share items you’re selling with your friends!
Fav spell check- We all make typos (yes, even this guy). If you try to make a payment on Venmo to one of your fav’s, and accidentally type in the wrong name, we’ll make sure you had the correct user.
As always, we’d love to hear your feedback and comments. Think of a killer feature we need to add? Let us know! Talk to us at our support forum, on Twitter, Facebook, or just leave us a comment below.
We’re excited to announce that Venmo is now being accepted by the following food trucks serving up delicious meals on Penn’s campus! Next time you’re hungry or want some coffee, stop by at one of these fine establishments and Venmo them for your food.
Hemo’s on 38th and Walnut- username hemos
HubBub coffee on 38th & Spruce- username hubbub
Don Memo’s on 38th & Sanson- username memos
Coup de Taco on 40th between Spruce & Locust- username coupdetaco
If you’re a vendor with multiple employees staffing your location at different times (for example, a food truck, small business, coffee shop, or campus organization), you might be wondering how you can use Venmo with an account named after your business. After all, isn’t Venmo tied to your phone number? How can an employee at the register verify that a customer has paid if they don’t personally get a payment receipt?
Introducing group receipts, a new feature that lets multiple employees get access to a single account’s invoices!
Here’s how to set it up:
1. If you’re the admin or manager of the business or group, you register a main account named after your business, for example: johnscoffee.
2. Let’s say you have 1 employee staffing your store apart from you, named Brian. He sets up an individual Venmo account, for example with the username brian.
3. To give Brian access to your receipts, you send Venmo a text with the prompt “ping [username of employee]“. For example, you’d say “ping brian” in a message to Venmo.
4. Brian will immediately get notified that you gave him access to your invoices. He needs to reply with the prompt “sub johnscoffee” to subscribe to johnscoffee’s receipts.
You can repeat this process for as many employees as you want. Each employee simply has to respond with “sub [username of the main business account]” (in this case, it’d be “sub johnscoffee”).
What are the benefits of using group receipts?
You make it easy for customers to pay you, since they only have to remember the Venmo account named after your business (e.g. johnscoffee).
You don’t need a dedicated device or point of sale system.
Anyone on your staff can man the register or checkout line– you don’t have to be around all the time.
You can keep track of your receipts and payments from one central account.
Get started using group receipts today! Got any questions? Let us know in the comments or send us an e-mail!
