Venmo Debuts Feature for Managing Group Expenses

Venmo has unveiled a new in-app feature that aims to streamline splitting and managing expenses among groups.

The new Venmo Groups provide users with a convenient way to divide and settle multiple or ongoing expenses among friends, family, roommates, partners and other groups, the peer-to-peer payment service said in a Tuesday (Nov. 14) press release.

Venmo Groups is being rolled out to select customers with the latest app version and will be widely available in the coming weeks, according to the release.

“We know managing ongoing expenses in a group can be challenging, in particular when each member covers different costs with different amounts at different times,” Erika Sanchez, vice president and general manager at Venmo, said in the release. “As one of our most requested features, Venmo Groups offers a seamless solution for users to better track and settle shared expenses in group settings.”

The design of Venmo Groups offers several benefits, according to the press release. Users save time and effort by integrating all calculations and transactions into the Venmo app.

Instead of relying on one person to track all expenses, Venmo Groups allows all members to add expenses, view amounts due, and settle up, the release said. The feature records all transactions.

Moreover, Venmo Groups fosters connectivity by simplifying expense sharing and keeping users connected with friends, family and community members, per the release. It enables users to split expenses for activities like little league groups, neighborhood supper clubs, kickball teams and book clubs.

The groups created with the Venmo Groups feature are designed to be ongoing, allowing new expenses to be added and calculated throughout the group’s existence, according to the release. For example, as the holiday season approaches, this feature provides a simpler way to calculate costs and manage budgets for group gatherings and trips.

In another recent expansion of the app’s capabilities, Venmo teamed up with payments firm InComm to offer eligible Venmo customers personalized ways to mark gifting occasions with popular gift card brands directly via the app. This partnership allows customers to use Venmo to send and receive digital gift cards for popular consumer brands, with those cards stored on the in-app wallet for future redemption.