Venmo Brings Instant Cash Function to Entire User Base

Perhaps the one downside of many online payment systems—PayPal is guilty of this as well, I know from long experience—is that it takes quite a bit of time for your money to depart the system and proceed to your other system of choice. Routing cash from PayPal to a bank account can take days, and that assumes you start the process during business hours on a weekday. Venmo, however, may be making a move to step that up thanks to a new feature now going into wide release.

Back last summer, Venmo announced an instant transfer feature that would let consumers immediately route cash from their account to a debit card for a $0.25 fee. Instant Transfer, as it was known, dropped the rate of transfer time from several days—particularly over holidays and weekends—down to under 30 minutes. The service will only work with Visa and Mastercard-branded systems, reports note, and should give users more options in terms of getting access to their own money.

It’s said to be part of a larger plan currently going on that better connects PayPal and its relevant properties—like Venmo—to Visa and Mastercard operations. It’s going to ultimately, reports note, take PayPal from being a payments system to being a facilitation point for digital banking and money transfers.

The choice here isn’t exactly a good one: you can pay a quarter to break your money out of transfer jail early, or let your money sit in transfer jail for several days at no charge to you or interest paid while PayPal, Venmo or whatever lets your money sit. The inevitable question will go unanswered; why exactly are you forcing me to pay you any amount to give me my own money a little faster? Still, it’s nice to have the option, and the company does need to make money at some point in order to keep offering the service.

It’s good to see that PayPal et al is taking customer service seriously, and such features might well be table stakes going forward. In the end, it’s all about getting money to where it needs to be. New options will only help smooth out the overall experience even more.