Does Venmo Have Buyer Protection?

 

When you accept Venmo in your daily life, and you decide to agree upon the Venmo’s user agreement, the platform is very clear with something: it is designed to send and receive money between people who know and trust each other.

Thus, you create your personal profile on the Venmo app, and proceed to start financial transactions with other Venmo users.

But then you want to purchase goods or services and the seller lets you pay with Venmo.

Will you have buyer protection when acquiring a good or service through Venmo? You are about to find out.

Read further to learn more about:

• Does Venmo have buyer protection?;
• What to know about Venmo’s seller and buyer protection;
• All you must know about the Venmo Purchase Program.

Does Venmo Have Buyer Protection?

Let’s cut straight to the chase: there’s a Venmo Buyer Protection only under two conditions:

1. If you get your payment explicitly authorized as a goods or services transaction;
2. If you make eligible purchases towards Venmo business accounts.

What does this mean? Well, as it happens with other payment apps, person-to-person transactions happen all the time.

So, imagine that you just bought digital concert tickets from a person who you don’t know. Then, your tickets weren’t sent - what do you do here?

If such transactions were not payments tagged as goods and services purchases, or, if they are transactions that took place with an unauthorized business profile, then forget about getting any kind of refund.

You could cancel your Venmo payment, but this might be kind of difficult in some scenarios.

Does Venmo Business Have Buyer Protection?

Yes. In fact, the Venmo website always encourages its users to avoid any payment to a personal account and get a business profile instead.

There’s a KYC and review process (where they need your Venmo SSN, for instance) that must be completed before you start to sell physical items or any other merchandise through Venmo, but it is worth noting that there are protection programs both for buyers and sellers.

Venmo for Business offers plenty of advantages to Business Profiles and people who are selling goods through the platform, such as exemptions for the standard 3% fee whenever the seller accept payments from buyers.

How Does Venmo’s Purchase Protection Program Work?

The Venmo Purchase Protection Program is what helps you to counter any potentially high-risk transaction, whether you are a buyer or a seller.

In this case, any qualifying transaction involves getting the required protection by the platform, depending on how you process it.

1. Transactions Covered by Venmo Purchase Protection Program

There are three scenarios where the protection applies to buyers:

1. Transactions performed with a Venmo debit card, no matter the item sold;
2. Goods or services payments to personal profiles marked as such transactions;
3. Purchases made directly with Venmo for Business accounts.

If you fail to call a payment to a personal account for goods and services, forget about enjoying the Venmo Purchase Protection Program.

Buyer Protection Claims on Venmo

So, imagine you pay with Venmo to a business profile or personal profile, but it happens that you lost both the payment and shipping costs due to inconsistencies.

What do you do to get your money back?:

1. Venmo will ask you to resolve the good or service purchase directly with the seller;
2. If this doesn’t work, and the item sold or services received were not the expected ones, you must provide proof of it to Venmo and open a 180 days dispute;
3. Your bank or credit card service must not have refunded the transaction. Otherwise, Venmo will be on the side of the seller.

2. Tagging a Payment as Goods and Services

Whenever you purchase something through your Venmo account from people you don’t know, you must mark it as a goods and services transaction.

This adds purchase protection to your money, which is imperative.

• Only an explicitly authorized payment to a personal profile can be marked as “Good or Service;”
• If you pay a business profile, Venmo’s user agreement says that protection will be automatic.

Then again, if the buyer sends a payment, doesn’t mark it and gets scammed on the Venmo app, it will be hard to receive a refund.

3. Venmo Purchase Protection Fee

Now, imagine that you receive payments through Venmo because you sell a good or service through a business profile.

In this case, the protection program also applies to your Venmo account, and it works like this:

1. If the buyer marks a purchase as “not received,” but you did send it, then you will have protection upon this translation;
2. There’s a small fee of 1.9% + $0.10 that is automatically deducted from the Vemo payment you receive - this is what “toggles” the protection;
3. The fee is paid by the seller, not the buyer.

On Hold Payments on Your Venmo Account

In case you have received a Venmo payment, but it happens to be on hold, then you need to check the following:

• Trying to perform unauthorized transactions on the platform can be a case of account freezing and even account termination if needed;
• If your selling pattern doesn’t match a newly received Venmo payment, your payment can be on-hold as well;
• Inactive and new sellers will have most payments on hold until the platform verifies their profiles;
• Multiple customers requesting the devolution of goods or services will also cause your money to be on hold until solved otherwise.

That’s all you need to know about Venmo and their buyer protection!

Remember that if you have any doubt, you can always contact Venmo Support Team for more in-detail information about this matter.

Venmo Buyer Protection FAQ

Can I Make a Venmo Payment to a Non-Profit Campaign?

No. Charitable contributions cannot be collected to Venmo whatsoever, so in order to avoid problems with the platform, do not move forward with donations through Venmo.

About the author

Steve

Steve specializes in cryptocurrency and finance. As a born researcher, he won’t leave any stone unturned when it comes to topics he covers.