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In the spirit of the holidays, Venmo updates its mobile app to make it easier to donate to local charities.
By first tapping the search bar in the Venmo app, you will see a new selection titled “Make a Donation”. There you will meet a wide variety of trending, local charities. Specific categories are also provided, including, but not limited to, animals, the environment, homelessness, and veterans. You can choose to pay with your in-app balance, your linked bank account or any credit card you have on file, according to the announcement (opens in new tab).
You do have to pay a small transaction fee (opens in new tab) of 1.9 percent plus an additional $0.10, but there’s no setup. You can start donating right away.
All of the charities in Venmo’s new section are approved by parent company Paypal, but we still recommend doing some homework and making sure you’re donating to a good place. Some charities, such as the Salvation Army, have a blue check mark for verification. This means that the charity has provided all the necessary paperwork to Paypal, proving it is legit. From what we could see, most of the charities have yet to be verified.
The update is currently available for download on both iOS (opens in new tab) and Android (opens in new tab). And in the coming weeks, Venmo will add a feature to share donations with your friends to encourage them to do the same.
More changes
In addition to the new charity section, Venmo is redesigning its peer-to-peer payment screen with some quality-of-life changes that make sending (or better yet, receiving) money easier.
Now you’ll see the profile picture of the person you’re sending money to instead of just the name, and the dollar amount will be in a larger font for easier viewing. Sending and requesting money is made easier with a new Plus button next to a recipient’s profile picture. By tapping the button, you can add more people for one big transaction instead of doing it one by one.
However, Send Money’s redesign is rolling out alongside the charity section today other reports (opens in new tab) indicate that this particular change may not reach all users at once. It will arrive in a later wave, after which you’ll need to update the app a second time.
And with Black Friday almost here, Venmo’s redesign couldn’t have come at a better time. TechRadar has a huge list of Black Friday deals you should check out. It ranges from laptops to game consoles and even mattresses.