In the spirit of the holiday season, Venmo is updating its mobile app to make it easier to donate to local charities.
When you first tap on the Venmo app's search bar, you'll see a new selection called "Donate." There you will find a wide variety of trendy local charities. Specific categories are also present, including but not limited to Animals, Environment, Homeless, and Veterans. You can choose to pay with your in-app balance, your linked bank account, or your credit card on file, according to the ad (opens in a new tab).
You have to pay a small transaction fee (opens in a new tab) of 1,9% plus an additional €0,10, but there is no setup. You can start donating right away.
All of the charities in the new Venmo section have been approved by parent company Paypal, but we still recommend doing some homework and making sure you're donating to a good place. Some charities, like the Salvation Army, sport a blue check mark. This means that the charity has provided all the necessary documents to Paypal, proving that it is legitimate. From what we have been able to tell, most of the charities have yet to be verified.
The update is currently available to download on iOS (Opens in a new tab) and Android (Opens in a new tab). And in the coming weeks, Venmo will add a feature to share donations made with your friends to encourage them to do the same.
More changes
Along with the new charity section, Venmo is revamping its peer-to-peer checkout with some quality-of-life changes that make it easier to send (or better yet, receive) money.
You'll now see the profile picture of the person you're sending money to instead of just the name, and the dollar amount will appear in a larger font for easier viewing. Sending and requesting money will be easier with the new More button next to the recipient's profile photo. By pressing the button, you can add more people for one big transaction instead of doing it one by one.
The Send Money redesign will roll out today along with the Charities section, but other reports - opens in a new tab - indicate that this particular change may not reach all users at once. It will come in a later wave, at which point you'll need to update the app a second time.
And with Black Friday almost upon us, Venmo's revamp couldn't have come at a better time. TechRadar has a massive list of Black Friday deals that you should check out. This ranges from laptops to game consoles and even mattresses.
