You can finally use Venmo to pay businesses (sort of)

We all knew it was coming, but now we have the first official instance of Venmo as something more than a peer-to-peer money transfer service: you can now pay on the Munchery and Gametime iOS apps with it.

…And that’s it. Furthermore, it’s limited to a small set of test users, and there isn’t even any Android support yet, though Venmo says that’s on the way. Today’s addition is really only a glimpse of what’s to come.

Despite the fact that PayPal had previously indicated Venmo would be taking on retail payments, it’s still interesting to see it starting to happen considering that Venmo and PayPal (which owns Venmo) do largely the same thing: send money. And while the former has already tried to incentivize users to use it for paying at businesses, it hasn’t put much of a dent on traditional payment methods.

Venmo may have a better shot. Its ease of use and simple sign up process have helped make it one of the most popular choices for sending money between friends, whether for splitting the bill or paying the rent.   Whereas PayPal transactions happen on occasion (unless you’re a merchant of some kind), Venmo users are more likely to use the app on a weekly or even daily basis.

For its part, PayPal says it eventually plans to extend Venmo support to all PayPal merchants, although there’s no word on how long that might take.

➤ Venmo Adds Support For Merchant Paymentsv [BuzzFeed]