iMessage Payments - How It Works

To send a payment or charge request directly from iMessage, you can follow the steps below:  

1. Open a conversation in Messages with the friend you’d like to pay or charge. 

2. Tap  to the left of the text field and choose  to open up your apps that are connected with iMessage.

3. Swipe until you get to Venmo, or choose Venmo from the apps that you have connected by tapping the four grey bubbles in the lower lefthand corner of the keyboard. If you have not yet enabled the Venmo iMessage extension, you can find instructions on how to do that here.

4. If this is your first time sending a payment or charge request in iMessage, you’ll see a tutorial. Once you get through that (or if you’ve done this before), choose “Request” or “Pay”. 

5. Type in the amount and note, and then tap the Pay or Request button to send just like you normally would in the app!  

Money leaves your account the moment you send a payment. However, the recipient needs to accept the payment before money is added to their Venmo balance.

6. Tap the  to the right of the text field to send the iMessage payment bubble to your friend. Once they receive that message, they’ll be able to accept your payment.

Payment status

Just like in the Venmo app, the moment you tap the green “Pay” button, funds will be taken from your balance (or your default funding source if your balance is not enough). However, payments sent in iMessage work a bit differently for the recipient than payments in the app. Specifically,  your friend needs to accept the payment for the funds to be added to their Venmo balance.

If your friend does not accept within 3 days, the funds will be reversed back to the funding source that you used to send the payment.

You can check to see if your friend has accepted the payment, or if it’s still pending, by opening up the iMessage payment bubble in the conversation. The status will be shown right at the top. You can always cancel the payment if it hasn’t been accepted yet by going to Incomplete in the Venmo app menu.