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.
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!
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!
You know that one friend who never seems to have cash on him? The one who says he’ll “pay you back” every time you go out for dinner or drinks, but never actually follows through? With Venmo, he now has no excuse not to (unless he loses his phone, that is).
Collecting money from someone using Venmo is easy! If your friend already has a Venmo account, send a text message to Venmo at (646) 863-9557 with the message “$5 from johnsmith” (for example, if user johnsmith owes you $5). Your friend gets a text message asking him to confirm the payment with a code, and you instantly get your money!
If your friend isn’t already on Venmo, collecting money is just as simple. Just send Venmo a text message with the from command and your friend’s cell phone number, for example “$5 from 2158098099″. Your friend will receive a text message notification of the payment request, and will then get a phone call from Venmo where he can securely enter his credit card information to process the payment.
So next time you’re out with a friend and he says he’ll pay you back “when I go to the ATM”, just collect money from him easily and quickly using Venmo!
If you’re like us, you probably live in your Gmail inbox. Read on to learn how to set up a filter to automatically label and archive all Venmo receipts, so you can easily organize and keep track of all your transactions, all from within Gmail!
1. Go to Gmail settings.
2. Go to the “Filters” tab, and click “Create a new filter”.
3. Under the search criteria, enter “Venmo receipt” in the “Has the words” field. If you want, you can do a test search to see all your Venmo transactions highlighted in the search. Select “Next Step”.
4. Select “Apply the label”, and create a new label with a title like “Venmo receipts”, or something similarly simple. Optionally, if you like to archive your inbox (why archive?), you can choose to automatically archive all Venmo receipts by choosing the “Skip the inbox” option.
That’s it! You’ve just set up a filter to automatically label and (optionally) archive all your receipts for Venmo transactions. It’s the simplest way to keep track of your Venmo history if you’re a heavy Gmail user.
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