How to Send Money from PayPal to Venmo: A Full Guide
PayPal and Venmo are familiar payment platforms to most of us. Both offer easy and fast ways to send money to friends, split bills and pay when shopping online. However, it’s not currently possible to send money directly from your Paypal account to a Venmo account - or vice versa.
Sending Venmo to PayPal - is it Possible?
It’s not possible to send money from Venmo to PayPal. If you’re shopping online and click on the PayPal button to pay, you might be offered the option to use Venmo to make the payment instead. However, person to person payments between Venmo and PayPal aren’t available yet.
If you're interested in finding an international transfer provider instead, you can read about these 5 great alternatives to Venmo to send convenient foreign payments.
How to Send Money from PayPal to Venmo - All the Options
Unfortunately at this stage there is no direct way to send money from PayPal to Venmo. Even though both payment platforms work in similar ways, and have a similar user experience, they’re not linked.
If you want to send money to someone from your PayPal account, the easiest way might be to simply have your recipient open a PayPal account and use that instead of trying to send to Venmo. Opening an account with PayPal is easy and free. Once your recipient has opened their PayPal account they can then withdraw the payment you send to their regular bank account, or use it when shopping online for example.
However, that might not always be possible to just avoid the problem. So what to do if someone has asked you to Venmo them and you want to pay from your PayPal balance? Or if you’re looking to transfer money between PayPal and Venmo accounts you hold in your own name?
Options for sending money from PayPal to Venmo:
- Send the money from PayPal to your linked bank account and then use it to fund a Venmo payment
- Link a PayPal debit card to your Venmo account
Pros and Cons
1. A linked bank account to connect your PayPal and Venmo accounts
- Easy if you have already linked the same bank account to both PayPal and Venmo
- If you have not yet linked your bank account, linking your account to PayPal can take 3 days for verification
- Linking your bank account to Venmo can be done instantly with a debit card, or in 1 business day for manual verification[3,4]
- You can only link your bank account to one PayPal account
- Standard withdrawals from PayPal to your bank account take 3 - 5 days
- Instant withdrawals are possible for a fee
2. Linking a PayPal debit card to your Venmo account
- Good option if you already have a PayPal debit card
- If you need to wait for your PayPal card to be delivered, expect to wait 7-10 business days to get started
- The PayPal debit card doesn’t have any monthly fees - but there are costs for some services you’ll want to check out
- You may pay a fee if your PayPal card is funded through a credit card or foreign currency bank account
The Costs:
PayPal to Venmo payment method | Costs - assuming USD denominated accounts |
Use linked bank account to connect PayPal and Venmo accounts |
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Link a PayPal debit card to your Venmo account |
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What to avoid when sending money from PayPal to Venmo
As you’ve seen, there are a few potential costs you might run into when you make a payment from PayPal to Venmo. There are also extra fees if you’re using a bank account in a foreign currency, or hold a PayPal balance in anything other than USD. That’s because both PayPal and traditional banks tend to charge fairly high fees for currency conversion. Costs may include upfront admin fees, and markups added to the exchange rate used. These charges can push up the overall price of currency conversion significantly, and make it more expensive to send money from PayPal to Venmo.
Let’s say you hold a PayPal balance in euros, and want to use it to send a payment to a friend using Venmo. Venmo payments can only be accepted in USD, so you’ll need to convert the euro balance you hold to dollars to pass it on. One way to do this is to convert the money in your PayPal account before you send it to your linked bank account, or before you use it to send to Venmo using your PayPal card. However, in this case you’ll pay PayPal’s currency conversion fee which is 3% of the payment value, as well as any other fees you need to pay as part of the transfer.
So there you have it - the full guide to sending money from PayPal to Venmo. At the moment making payments between these two major platforms is not a straightforward process. Using one of the workarounds we have explored can help you connect Venmo and PayPal to process a payment. Watch out for the potential costs, and try to give yourself a few days to get everything set up to make sure everything goes smoothly.
Sending money abroad? Compare the exchange rates and fees
By
Ileana Ionescu
Updated August 12th, 2021