Venmo Groups – Brief History

Venmo Groups was launched in beta in 2015. The original idea behind this feature was to allow users to create Venmo accounts for their group or club, in turn facilitating group payments.

This would help further Venmo’s mission of connecting the world and empowering people through payments. Venmo Groups was only ever in beta and so its availability was limited to a select number of users. This was an interesting feature that clearly had value so we created this page to answer questions Venmo users might have about Venmo Groups.

How Do Venmo Groups Work?

Each Venmo Group has a ‘Group Owner’ which is usually the person that created the group. The Group Owner can add and remove managers, add and remove payment methods, handle the sending and receiving of payments, view the group’s transaction history in addition to other Venmo features.

In addition to the Group Owner, the members of the groups are ‘Group Managers’. Group Managers can send and receive money to and from the group respectively. In addition to this Group Managers can do the following:

• Transfer funds from the group balance to the connected bank account.
• Send fund requests from the group account.
• Send funds from the group account using the payment methods added by the Group Owner.

You do not need to be a Group Owner or Manager to transact with a particular group. All you need is a Venmo account. The below diagram visualizes the way Venmo Groups work:

The Group Owner and Group Managers are able to access the Group’s accounts and facilitate payments. Venmo users who are not part of the group cannot access the Group’s accounts, but can transact with the Group just as they would with another Venmo user.

The Group Owner is responsible for and personally liable for all the activity that the group performs – what this means in practice is that if something goes wrong with the group, responsibility falls to the Group Owner.

Therefore if the group ends up with a payment issue, the Group Owner is responsible for paying back Venmo to resolve it. Payment issues frequently results in Venmo accounts being frozen, which is responsibility that will also fall to the Group Owner.

How To Transfer Venmo Group Ownership

It is possible to transfer ownership of a Venmo group account. However, the only person that can change the Group Owner is the current Group Owner. In addition, the new group owner will have to have their identity verified by Venmo which is a request that gets sent via e-mail. You may have already done this if you previously tried to transfer more than $1,000 in a given week.

To change the Group Owner, the current owner can sign into the group account, select the ‘People’ tab and select the ‘Leave group’ option. From here you will be prompted to enter the information of the user you would like to transfer ownership of the group to.

Venmo Groups Limits

Venmo Groups spending limits is tied to the Group Owner’s personal Venmo account limits. Every group owner starts with a weekly spending limit of $4,999.99. Venmo currently will not increase the spending limit for Venmo Groups.

Is Venmo Groups Still Available?

Venmo Groups remains available to users that already created Group accounts. You can access those group accounts by visiting this page. However, as of this writing the Venmo Groups product beta has ended, and it is not possible to create new group accounts.