Why Venmo Needs Events
Two weeks ago, my apartment mates and neighbors hosted a (lit) joint Halloween party. We announced the event a few days in advance, bought the drinks and decorations the morning of, prepped the apartments in the evening, and then let the night take away us and the 150 students who came through.
After we threw out the trash, re-arranged the furniture, and swiffered the swiffered the floor 6 times, the five of us — the party hosts — wanted to figure out the costs and profits from the party.
Each of us paid for party supplies on our own dimes, and had our respective friends at the party venmo us a small amount to help cover the costs. As such, each of us had a distinct amount of money spent and money received through the event.
We had three options on how to split the costs and profits:
- pay back each other with no real plan in mind as to how to do so fairly
- pay all our profits to a single person, who would then pay each host for their respective party purchases, and then divide the profits evenly
- deal with it later
We opted for the third option, which is a reason I’m writing this article. We’re all pushing it off because no one wants to go through the second option — the most fair but also the most time- and brain-consuming.
Enter, Venmo Events
This feature would be a temporary Venmo handle — a unique @ signature (mine is @rahrang)— assigned to a single user or group of users (“owners”) for the sole purpose of collecting money for an event, campaign, fundraiser, party, etc.
The handle would be active for a specified amount of time — anywhere from a day to two weeks (perhaps longer) — and would act as the primary Venmo account for all event payments. The owners would be able to make or request payments via the handle. Upon the handle’s expiry, any money leftover in the account would be distributed evenly among the users tied to the event handle, and the handle would be invalidated. This would incentive the owners to figure out costs in a timely manner, and allow popular handles like @halloween-party to be re-used.
More importantly, this would prevent a mixture of funds. When the party started and the funds started rolling in, my Venmo account already had a balance. To figure out how much I “earned” that night, I had to go through my entire Venmo history and track each person and the amount they paid. As we all have to do the same to solve the issue of repayments, I’m not sure we will actually ever get around to doing so.
Why We Need It
Venmo has millions of users, not all of whom are people. My business fraternity has a Venmo account used to take payments for fundraisers and make repayments to members for professional materials (e.g. flyers for recruitment, gifts for event speakers, food for social events, etc.). It’s not easy to track the inflow and outflow of money, especially if it’s all going into a single account with an existing balance that’s used for several other transactions.
Venmo events can be used for events, but also for solo businesses — my former roommate Steve operates a business in which he brews cold coffee every week and charges his customers by the mason jar (the unit of measurement for hipster cold brew connoisseurs).
It’s a feature I would love to see in the future, and there’s no doubt Venmo’s users and Venmo itself could profit from it.
As I close, I notice that Venmo is beta-testing its new Groups feature. It is very similar to what I covered in this article, but there are a couple differences:
- It’s not temporary — you create a group to establish an account for transactions beyond a specified time limit.
- Up to three “managers” can oversee the account and make transactions.
I think the reusability of Venmo handles would still be a key factor in an Events feature — I wouldn’t need the handle @halloween-party forever, and I’d feel bad taking it away from others who want it for their own events.
With an increasing population relying on Venmo, especially college students, Events would improve a user’s experience and peace of mind when holding group events.
Rahul Rangnekar is a senior studying Computer Science and Economics at UC Berkeley. He is an avid programmer, foodie, athlete, and student. He strives to make the world a better place, one product at a time. He hopes to find a career in product management or software engineering. Email him at rr@berkeley.edu.
