If you’re receiving a payment for a good or service to your personal Venmo profile, read on. If you have a business profile, please view our Business Profile Help Center.
We want to make sure people using Venmo can feel confident when making or receiving a payment for a purchase. Whether you’re buying something in a store using your Venmo QR code or selling something to another Venmo user, we want to do what we can to help if something goes wrong.
Why am I charged a fee when my buyer tags a payment as a purchase?
Venmo’s Purchase Protection program offers both you and your buyer some peace of mind. To help make purchases safer for all involved, Venmo sometimes gives the buyer the ability to tag the payment to another user’s personal profile as a purchase, which means that it’ll be covered by Venmo’s Purchase Protection Program, if eligible. Venmo Purchase Protection can help prevent you from losing money due to unauthorized transactions or claims that the buyer never received their purchase. If the sale meets our requirements, and you can provide proof that an order has been fulfilled, Venmo will prevent chargebacks from impacting your business. Plus, it helps the people who buy from you feel more comfortable about the transaction.
The seller pays a small fee of 1.9% + $0.10 of the transaction. If the buyer makes a payment of $100, the seller would receive $98 and $2 would be used to pay the fee.
This payment wasn’t for a purchase. Can the fee be refunded?
Once a buyer has tagged a payment as a purchase, Venmo will honor that. If the sender has made this selection by mistake, please contact our Support team.
I got a notification that someone sent me money for a purchase. What is this?
This notification lets you know that the buyer tagged a payment as a purchase. If you’re on an up-to-date version of the Venmo app, we’ll show you this notification by default every time you receive a payment like this. If you don’t want to see this notification when buyers identify future payments as a purchase, you can tap “Don’t show again” the next time that you see it.
I sent someone a request, but received less money than I expected when it was fulfilled
It’s likely that your buyer tagged the payment as a purchase. Once the buyer tags a purchase, Venmo will honor that. If a buyer has made this selection by mistake, please ask them to contact our Support team.
I’m refunding my buyer. Is the fee refunded as well?
You can refund a buyer by making a new payment to them. The payment will look like a new payment in your feed and on your statement. Please note that the refund won't be tied to the original payment from the buyer.
Please remember that the fee would have been deducted from the amount that you received from the buyer. To refund your buyer the full amount they paid you, you will need to add the fee amount back in to your return payment. If you refund a payment to a buyer, the fees you originally paid as the seller are not returned.
Does Venmo have any other features for sellers?
If you frequent use Venmo to sell things, we’d recommend exploring business profiles. Some benefits of creating a business profile include, but are not limited to:
- Increased visibility for your business in the Venmo app
- Ability to generate referrals among socially engaged Venmo users
- Options to provide potential customers with more information about your business in the app, including links to a website and social media accounts
- In-app photo gallery to feature products and services (only available for some industries)
- Ability to refund customers directly from the Venmo app
- Formal tax documentation for business profiles that meet or exceed federal and state reporting thresholds
- Ability to enable tipping on payments your business receives
- QR Kits for easy, touch-free payment options