Stripe vs Venmo: Which is best for your business?

Mobile payment apps like Venmo make it easy to send money quickly and conveniently to your friends and family — helping you split costs at happy hour, bachelor parties, week-long vacations, and everything in between. And if your friends and family happen to be your roommates, too, being able to divide rent and utility costs is an added bonus.

But what if you recently opened a business? Can Venmo help you manage your everyday business expenses, accept customer payments, and meet compliance requirements, or is it better to use a mobile payment platform like Stripe that’s built for e-commerce?

To find out, here’s a look at Stripe vs Venmo for business.

Overview of Venmo for business

If you’re the owner of a small or medium-sized company, a Venmo business account can help you boost visibility, find new customers among current Venmo users, and make money — all from the palm of your hand. It’s powerful, easy to use and understand, and, most importantly, safe and secure for both you and your customers.

With Venmo for business, you can

• Enable customers to pay — as well as tip — directly on the Venmo app or site
• Send and receive money (just like you can with a personal Venmo account)
• Pocket more of your hard-earned money, thanks to no setup or monthly fees
• Nurture healthy, strong customer relationships by “liking” customer purchases and thanking them for their support

Overview of Stripe

While Venmo can be used for both person-to-person and business payments, Stripe is built strictly for business transactions. From direct payouts and card storage to instant payment acceptance and payment card industry (PCI) compliance, Stripe has all the tools you need to manage your entire business online — whether your industry is e-commerce, software as a service (SaaS), finance, or something else.

What’s more, Stripe is a global organization (whereas Venmo is only available to U.S.-based users), helping businesses around the world handle payments, financial services, and everyday operations from one fully integrated platform.

Now that you have a better understanding of how the two platforms operate, let’s examine three key areas where they differ: transaction fees, features, and customer support.

Stripe vs Venmo for business: Transaction fees

One of the biggest differences between Stripe and Venmo for business is how much each costs.

With Stripe’s pay-as-you-go pricing, you’ll pay 2.9 percent plus 30 cents to accept card payments online and 2.7 percent plus 5 cents to accept payments in person. This plan includes everything you need to accept, process, settle, reconcile, and manage payments, and there are no setup, monthly, annual, or hidden fees to worry about. Additionally, for large-volume businesses with unique business models and high-value transactions, Stripe users can even design a custom package to better meet their needs.

Venmo for business, on the other hand, charges a nonrefundable seller transaction fee of 1.9 percent plus 10 cents for every payment you receive that’s $1 or more. And unlike Stripe, there are no alternative pricing options based on size, trade, or current business model. Venmo’s seller transaction fee is the same for all business account holders.

Stripe vs Venmo for business: Features

Another major difference between these two payment platforms lies in the features they offer.

Because Stripe is exclusively designed for business transactions, users get to enjoy more than 100 business-specific features — including data security and encryption, powerful customer interfaces, preferred payment options, real-time financial reporting, and dispute handling. Stripe helps build optimized checkout processes, meet rigorous compliance requirements, provide fast payouts to your bank accounts, and monitor and measure disputed transactions — quickly and effectively.

Like Stripe, Venmo for business accepts and manages customer payments; is highly encrypted; assists with necessary, formal documentation come tax season; and enables users to refund customers directly from the app. However, Venmo for business doesn’t offer many of the high-end business features — like invoice support, multiple currencies, consolidated payouts, or the option to “buy now, pay later” on large purchases — that Stripe does.

Stripe vs Venmo for business: Customer support

Lastly, Stripe and Venmo for business largely differ when it comes to customer support.

While they both offer useful and supportive FAQ pages, live chat, and email forms to try to help you resolve issues, Venmo offers a quicker customer service option — an 800 number accessible 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Though you can speak on the phone or via chat with a Stripe representative, you first have to request a call through other channels, such as an in-app ticket or email.

Stripe vs Venmo for business: The decision

If you have a small or medium-sized business — especially one that’s just starting out, with less capital and social reach — Venmo for business is all you need to accept customer payments and dabble in customer engagement. But if you have a larger, more established company, Stripe can better accommodate and scale with your growing business.

Fortunately, no matter which platform you use, one thing is certain: Your data and money (as well as your customers’) will be safe and secure because both Stripe and Venmo for business are highly encrypted and regularly audited.