You Can Now Open a Venmo Account for Your Teen (and Control It)
As adults, we use money-changing apps like Venmo all the time. Out for dinner? Agree with Venmo. Roommate paying rent? Venmo over your soul mate. Teens, on the other hand, aren’t allowed on Venmo, and while they don’t mostly deal with rent or complicated dinner bills, they do spend money, too. Now Venmo wants your teen to have an account, but they want you to have full control.
Venmo has introduced ” Venmo Teen Account “, a new type of Venmo account designed for teens. It allows parents and legal guardians to open a Venmo Teen account for their teens aged 13 to 17. Until now , you had to be at least 18 years old to open a Venmo account (or the age of majority in your state). so this change will surely open up Venmo to a lot more people.
A Venmo press release states that the main goal of the new initiative is to help parents teach their teens how to handle money and personal finances. This may well be true. But I guess Venmo will especially like how teenagers learn about personal finance by spending that money through Venmo.
How Venmo Teen Accounts Work
As with other child or young adult accounts, the Venmo Teen account does not give youth carte blanche access to their parents’ finances. You set up an account for your teen (up to five) that is linked to your personal Venmo account. From there, you control the entire process, including your child’s payments, balance, and Venmo friends.
Obviously this whole operation is about privacy. You can imagine attackers attacking teen accounts looking for ways to swindle teens out of their parents’ money. But Venmo sets private accounts for teens by default, which means other Venmo users won’t be able to see their activity. You can change these settings if you want, but really, who needs to see these transactions other than your kids and yourself?
Another benefit is the Venmo Teen Account debit card: this Mastercard-branded debit card is account-linked and offers neither monthly fees nor ATM withdrawal fees through Mastercard, Cirrus, PULSE, or MoneyPass machines. Teenagers can withdraw up to $400 per day with a $2.50 fee at all non-promo ATMs. You control the PIN for this card and can block or unblock access at any time.
How to sign up for a Venmo Teen account
The Venmo Teen account is officially launching in June 2023, which means you should see the feature appear on your Venmo app in the “coming weeks”, possibly starting Thursday, June 1st. However, you can subscribe to the notification list here to know when the feature is ready for your account.
To get started, you’ll need your own Venmo account. With your personal Venmo open, go to the Me screen, select your name in the top left corner, then click Create Teen Account. You can choose the color of the debit card and then fill in your child’s information, including their name, birthday, and address.