Starting today, Venmo, owned by PayPal, is introducing a new feature enabling users to efficiently monitor and handle diverse expenses within groups, such as family or household expenditures, club or sports team fees, and community organization costs. Venmo Groups empowers users to seamlessly oversee, divide, manage, and reconcile ongoing expenses directly within the Venmo app.
This innovation aims to replace more manual tracking methods, like spreadsheets or the utilization of separate apps for distinct group activities, trips, or household bills. Instead, the feature automatically computes each individual’s share of the collective spending, streamlining expense settlement within the familiar Venmo interface.
While this enhancement simplifies group expense management, it could potentially impact the user base of specialized apps like Splitwise, designed for organizing group expenses, whether for local clubs, travel expenses, or shared bills among roommates. Venmo Groups builds upon the platform’s existing functionality, where users commonly split bills for meals or rounds of drinks, expanding its application to various group expenses.
Erika Sanchez, Venmo’s Vice President and General Manager, highlighted the challenge of managing ongoing group expenses and emphasized Venmo Groups as a highly requested solution. The feature not only facilitates expense division within a widely used app but also decentralizes expense management, allowing any group member to add expenses, view amounts owed, and settle up.
Anticipating adoption among diverse groups like little leagues, supper clubs, kickball teams, and book clubs, Venmo envisions the feature serving communities that blend informal social dynamics with financial interactions. Users can access Venmo Groups via the “Me” page in the app, creating groups, adding expenses, and settling up under the new “Groups” tab.
The rollout of this feature commences today for select users on the Venmo app for iOS and Android, with wider availability expected in the coming weeks.
