We adults use money-sharing apps like Venmo all the time. Go out to dinner? Settle up with Venmo. Roommate pays the rent? Venmo over your half. Teens, on the other hand, aren’t allowed on Venmo, and while they mostly don’t deal with rent or complicated dinner bills, they spend money, too. Now, Venmo wants your teen to have an account—but they want you to have all the control.
Venmo introduced the “Venmo Teen Account,” a new type of Venmo account designed for teenagers. With it, parents and legal guardians can open a Venmo Teen Account for their teens ages 13 through 17. Up 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 no doubt open up Venmo use to a lot more people.
Venmo’s press release claims a major goal of the new initiative is to help parents teach their teens about money and personal finance. That very well may be true. But I imagine Venmo will especially like the way teens learn about personal finance by spending that money through Venmo.
How Venmo Teen Accounts work
As with other child or young adult accounts, a Venmo Teen Account won’t give the youth carte blanche access to their parents’ finances. You set up the account for your teen (up to five), which is tied to your personal Venmo account. From there, you monitor the whole shebang, including your kid’s payments, balance, and Venmo friends.
There’s obviously a privacy concern to the entire operation here. You can imagine bad actors targeting teen accounts, looking for ways to scam teenagers out of their parents’ money. But Venmo sets Teen Accounts to private by default, which means other Venmo users won’t be able to see their activity. You can change those settings if you want, but, really, who needs to see these transactions other than your kids and yourself?
Another perk is the Venmo Teen Account debit card: This Mastercard-brand debit card is tied to the account, and offers no monthly fees nor ATM withdrawal fees through Mastercard, Cirrus, PULSE, or MoneyPass machines. Teens can withdraw up to $400 per day, with a $2.50 fee on all non-participating ATMs. You control the PIN to this card, and you can lock or unlock access at any time.
How to sign up for a Venmo Teen Account
Venmo Teen Account is officially rolling out in June 2023, which means you should start seeing the feature appear in your Venmo app in “coming weeks,” potentially beginning Thursday, June 1. However, you can sign up for the notification list here to know when the feature is ready for your account.
To start, you need a Venmo account of your own. With your personal Venmo open, go to the “Me” screen, choose your name in the top left, then hit “Create a teen account.” You can choose the color you want the debit card to be, then fill out your child’s info, including their name, birthday, and address.
