The app asks you to Venmo a friend of friends next time you want to buy a concert ticket.Venmo unveiled a new way to use Venmo to transact goods and services. This allows people with personal accounts to switch between different types of transactions. Venmo charges a 1.9% commission on commercial transactions. This was previously only available to registered businesses. These transactions can be protected by payment protection in exchange. If you're selling a couch, and the buyer wants to pay via Venmo for it, you can flip a switch and pay a fee. This will protect both sides in case of dispute.Many of its customers are familiar with the gray area that the app is trying to zero in on. According to the Venmo user agreement, personal accounts cannot be used for business purposes, such as paying for concert tickets, electronic equipment or sneakers, deposits for apartments or dog walking, and it is common for people to pay babysitters via Venmoor. This could be a Venmo attempt to identify any person gaming the system. The company declined comment to discuss how it monitors transactions. Many of these transactions are only described or have one emoji.According to a spokesperson for Venmo, accounts can be terminated or suspended, but the company's main goal is to educate customers about the benefits, protections and value of the payment options for goods and services. Venmo parent PayPal stated that more than half the respondents to its 2020 survey indicated they would most likely make a purchase with someone they don't know if they had purchase protection.Payment protection is an essential aspect of e-commerce and should be included on all peer-to-peer payments apps. However, asking people to pay fees for pseudo-business transactions could be misleading. The spokesperson gave the example of buying a couch from an ad listing or selling concert tickets to a friend. Venmo has 70 million users, but it still makes no profit.
