Venmo Business vs Personal: What’s the difference?

Panna Kemenes

Published: 07.02.23

3 minute read

You may best know Venmo as a digital wallet used for easy peer-to-peer transactions. As of 2022, there were over 77.7 million active users of Venmo.¹

But Venmo also offers a business profile, allowing you to accept payments for goods and services. More than 2 million merchants accept payments via Venmo.²

This article will look at Venmo Business vs personal accounts, the pros, cons, fees and everything else involved.

💡 It will also explore Wise Business as an alternative choice if you need to make international transactions.

Venmo Business vs Personal: Quick overview

Here’s a quick overview of Venmo personal vs business account features.

	Venmo Business	Venmo Personal
Best for	Sole proprietors, individuals, associations and registered businesses³	Anyone looking to make peer-to-peer transactions
Account opening fee	None	None
Receiving fees	Fee of 1.9%+$0.10 USD for every payment received of $1.00 or more⁴	No fee when Venmo users send you payments using Venmo
Allowed for business use	Yes	No

📝 This article will cover:

Venmo fees
Pros and Cons
Wise for international use

Is Venmo Business different from Venmo?

With a Venmo personal account, you can make peer-to-peer transactions. On top of this, you can make payments to authorized business accounts.

But, if you want to accept payments in return for a good or service that you offer, then you’ll need to open a Venmo Business account.

With a Venmo Business account, you can accept business payments.

Can you use regular Venmo for business?

You cannot use a personal Venmo profile for accepting business payments.⁵

Venmo forbids these transactions for two reasons.

Firstly, personal profiles don’t have the tax records necessary for business accounts. And secondly, there’s no way of ensuring customer privacy when accepting personal payments.

For these reasons, personal profiles on Venmo are unsuitable for accepting business payments.

What happens if you use personal Venmo for business?

If you accept a payment for a good or service on your Venmo personal profile, Venmo might review the payment.

During the review, Venmo may reverse the payment, causing you to lose it and the product or service you sold.⁵

Using Venmo for business

Venmo fees: Personal vs Business

Let’s now take a look at Venmo business account vs personal account fees.

Venmo business accounts are charged a fee on every received transaction that is equal to or greater than $1.00 USD. This is known as the seller transaction fee and is 1.9% + $0.10 USD of the payment.

It’s the seller, and not the buyer, who has to pay this fee, which is in line with industry standards.⁴

So if a customer sends $200 USD to your Venmo business account, for example, then you’ll receive $196.10 USD.

It should be noted that these fees are non-refundable. With the help of these fees, Venmo can provide business specific features and services.⁴

Apart from the seller transaction fee, there are no extra Venmo business account fees.

Fees associated with both personal and business accounts include:

Instant transfer fee for electronic withdrawals of 1.75% (minimum $0.25 USD, maximum $25 USD fee)
Out-of-network (non-MoneyPass) ATM withdrawal fee of $2.50 USD
Over-the-counter cash withdrawal (bank and other financial institution) fee of $3.00 USD

Aside from these, Venmo Business is relatively fee-free, with no account creation or monthly fees.⁶

🔍 Learn more about Venmo Business fees.

Person using Venmo for business

Venmo Personal vs Business: Pros and Cons

The Venmo Business account comes with a range of business specific features. Venmo offers businesses tax reporting tools, enhanced payment features and dispute services.⁴

Offering Venmo as a payment option gives customers an easy, swift way to pay for your products.

You can integrate Venmo as a payment option in your business’ own mobile app or website.²

Customers can also pay using Venmo in-store by scanning your business’ QR code.⁷

In addition to this, Venmo businesses benefit from increased visibility in the app. Highly-engaged Venmo users can also refer your business, giving you increased marketing. Every time users buy one of your products, it will show up in their feed, giving your business effectively free marketing.

To create a Venmo Business account, you aren’t required to open a new account with Venmo. Instead, it will be linked to your Venmo personal account. This simplifies your life while keeping your personal and business finances separate.⁷

One negative for both accounts, is that Venmo international transactions are not possible.

International business payments
up to 19x cheaper than PayPal:
Join Wise Business today

Check out the research

The main difference between Venmo Business account vs Personal

The main difference between a Venmo Business vs personal account is that you cannot accept business payments with the personal account.

With Venmo Business, you also have access to a range of business specific features that aren’t available on the personal account.

Need to send or receive international payments? Try Wise

One thing both Venmo personal and business accounts have in common, is that they don’t support international transactions. This is where a Wise Business account could be a great alternative.

Wise Business is an online banking alternative. With the Wise Business account, managing finances becomes easier - all around the world.

👉 Make low-cost conversions and transfers
👉 Control your spending with limits and alerts
👉 Move funds between currencies seamlessly
👉 Hold 50+ currencies at once, all in one place
👉 Easy to set up, easy to use

Get a Wise Business account today

You’ll have access to the mid-market exchange rate, making your money go further. You can also get local account details for 10 different currencies, allowing you to receive money like a local - with no messy cross border fees.

If you have employees abroad, you can pay up to 1000 employees or suppliers abroad in just one click.

15 million people and businesses already use Wise. You can easily create an account online, and start saving time and money for your business today.

🔍 Read more:
Venmo vs PayPal for business Does Venmo international transfer work? Best alternatives

Sources:

All sources checked 7th February, 2023.

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