ProductVenmoInnovationTechnology
| MICHAEL VAUGHAN, VENMO GM
Recently, there’s been some commentary about the security of Venmo’s service and our responsiveness to our customers. It’s really important to everyone at Venmo that we address this with you directly. Our most important job at Venmo is to protect your money and provide you with a secure and easy way to make and share payments. This involves building an amazing product experience, but it also includes the teams of people behind the scenes who work tirelessly and are dedicated to protecting and supporting you - our fraud prevention, customer support and operations teams. We are all part of the community and we are grateful for those of you who have posed questions and provided feedback.
First things first, I want you to know a lot of what we do to protect you is happening behind the scenes. We focus on your safety and overall experience as a whole. We don’t build for features just for features’ sake. We’re processing billions of dollars of your payments every year and we maintain fraud rates favorable to industry standards and that is why we are comfortable guaranteeing your money if you are the victim of unauthorized transactions.
So….. here are the things we do to help keep you secure:
• We have fraud protection algorithms and systems that are always on. As much as I’d love to share more here, I don’t want to tip our hand to would-be fraudsters, but we back it up by guaranteeing your money from unauthorized transactions.
• We encrypt your sensitive financial information, including your bank account details. That data is never stored on your device. It’s not even visible to you. Ha. Take that. So, even if your crazy uncle got your password and logged into your account without you knowing, your bank account information is not visible. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about all those checks you’re writing that have your full routing number and account number at the bottom. But that’s a story for another day.
• We are PCI-compliant and your debit/credit card info is encrypted and secure. You’re probably wondering “What is PCI-compliant?” Answer: it’s a credit card industry standard to make sure we’re doing our job to protect you. It’s kind of like putting on suspenders after you have a belt on, and then having your mom check your belt and snap your suspenders to make sure they’re both working.
• We set payment limits to protect against unauthorized transactions and only verified accounts have higher limits.
• We log you out of a web session after a certain period of inactivity.
And if that’s not enough, here are some things you can do for yourself to make you feel more comfortable when using Venmo:
• Set a passcode lock on the Venmo app (in addition to your phone lock) that’s required each time you open it. If you have an iPhone, you can use TouchID instead of a four-digit PIN to use fingerprint authentication for your Venmo lock.
• Disable any device and remotely log out of a session from your web settings if you have any concerns to prevent unauthorized transactions.
• Set options to receive text messages, push notifications or emails for payment transactions and a wide range of app activities so that you can monitor your account.
And, as with any online service: use a password that is strong and unique to your Venmo account. Venmo can’t guarantee the security of your other apps and services and sharing a password across many services can make your account vulnerable - as with any online service.
I want to assure you we are continuously improving product and security measures. We have a bunch of things we’ve been working on and we’ll share more of those with you soon. While we know that we measure up favorably against the industry standards for fraud prevention, we aren’t sitting back.
Another concern we’ve heard is some frustration in delays in getting help from us when you need it. We never want you to be disappointed and we’re sorry if that’s been the case. Our support team is the lifeblood of Venmo and we aim to be the biggest advocates for you. As we grow rapidly, we are working diligently to keep the level of service you should expect, and we’re hiring more people to work in support (if you are interested in joining us). We’re also looking at other areas where we can offer additional help more quickly including chat support and taking a new approach to support that will enable us to better interact with our users.
Venmo doesn’t exist without you, our users, and our job is to do right by you. We work to earn your trust every day. We take that responsibility seriously and we will do our best to be as transparent as possible with you as we continue on this journey. As part of that relationship, we value your feedback and we welcome it continuously to help make Venmo better. We’re all standing by to listen to your comments – please email us at support@venmo.com and we will answer every single question you have as quickly as we can.
Thanks for being a part of the Venmo family.