PayPal-owned Venmo today announced it inked a partnership with Uber that lets its users pay the ride share company through their Venmo accounts. Apple Pay has had this feature with Uber for over a year.
The Venmo feature is not available yet. It will be rolled out to Uber and Uber Eats customers over the coming weeks, a PayPal spokesperson told Bank Innovation. It is unclear if Venmo roll out the feature at once or if it plans to gradually roll out the feature to users in phases.
Only a few weeks ago, Venmo unveiled its debit card, which is powered by Mastercard. Today’s integration with Uber is likely to encourage users to maintain a steady cash balance in their Venmo debit account.
To make a payment to Uber, Venmo users will have to link their accounts as a payment method in the Uber app. The feature will also allow users to split bills on both Uber and Uber Eats. The bill-split feature is becoming a common offering for P2P apps, most recently Google Pay added that feature. Right now Zelle, Venmo and Apple Pay have it.
Of course, since Venmo is a social payments app, there will be a special Uber and Uber Eats emoji that users can share on their Venmo feed.
For San Francisco-based Uber, this is not the first time it has partnered with financial company. Last October, Uber partnered with Barclays Bank on its own Uber Credit Card, powered by Visa.
For PayPal, the move to add this Venmo feature possibly comes from CEO Dan Schulman’s goal to ensure Venmo makes the company money this year. PayPal has not seen significant monetary returns from Venmo since it acquired the company in 2015. Schulman at various company presentation, including its Q1 earnings call in April, said the company is “making strong progress in monetizing Venmo.” In April, PayPal reported that Venmo processed $12.3 billion in payment volume, up 80% versus last year.
Former Venmo head of mobile business development Mike Dudas said the move was hugely important for the P2P service:
This is the single most important development in @Venmo‘s history since they launched and introduced a mobile app. “Pay with Venmo” on @Uber is *massive* validation of @PayPal‘s acquisition to ensure revenue from people under age 40. Kudos @williamready! https://t.co/p8bzblDgNH
— Mike Dudas (@mdudas) July 12, 2018







