Venmo to be officially available for teenagers

NEW YORK — Teenagers will officially be allowed to open a Venmo account with their parent’s permission, the company said Monday, expanding the popular social payments app to an age demographic that is likely to embrace it almost immediately.

Using Venmo won’t necessarily be new to a good number of teens — parents often set up accounts for their children through their own accounts, which is a violation of Venmo’s terms of service. There have been guides on the internet for some time showing parents how to create a child’s account without Venmo penalizing them.

Venmo has been a popular way to send money to individuals for years, and now has more than 90 million users. The product for teens comes at a time when other social apps are being watched closely by politicians and regulators. The state of Montana banned TikTok last week, and other states are considering a ban as well.

Opening up Venmo to teenagers will be a significant expansion of Venmo’s market. Company executives in March estimated that a Venmo account for teenagers could create 25 million potential new customers. The company estimated that 9 million teenagers were using Venmo through their parents.

The Venmo Teen Account will be available for 13- to 17-year-olds and comes with a debit card as well. Parents will be able to monitor transactions, adjust privacy settings and move money to their teenager.

Withdrawals from ATMs using the debit card will have a $400 daily limit, and users will need to withdraw money from participating ATMs or incur a $2.50 fee. Otherwise there are no fees attached to creating or maintaining the account.