Venmo has redesigned its app to remove the global payments feed, after a high-profile incident in which President Biden’s account was discovered.
Venmo is the digital payment app owned by PayPal. A key component of Venmo’s popularity is its social component. Users can see each other’s transactions in a social media-style feed. In previous versions of the app, it was even possible to see the transactions of strangers in the global feed.
Unfortunately for the company, it was extremely easy to find President Biden’s account, leading it to make changes. The new app redesign completely ditches the global feed.
Venmo has always been social at its core, designed to be a place where friends can split and share payments and experiences. As part of our ongoing efforts to continually evolve the Venmo platform, while staying true to the heart of the Venmo experience, we are removing the global feed, and the friends feed is now the only social feed that will appear in the app. The Venmo community has grown to more than 70 million customers, so this change allows customers to connect and share meaningful moments and experiences with the people who matter most.
The move is a welcome one, as far as privacy advocates are concerned, and brings the app a little more into the mainstream.