Venmo is quickly becoming an easy way to pay a friend for lunch or movie tickets, and scammers are catching onto the trend.
Some recent reports from users have indicated that the hot fintech app is wreaking havoc in buyer-seller transactions.
A man selling his car on Craigslist was scammed out of $1,800 when the buyer agreed to transfer the money via Venmo. According to the seller’s report, he confirmed the payment when he received a deposit into this Venmo account. Things went smoothly until Venmo reversed the payment. The car title was already signed over, and the seller was out $1,800.
In another incident, a man selling iPhones over the holiday was scammed out of over $5,000 in a blink of an eye. He saw the money coming into his account, and then after everything was finalized the money was taken back by Venmo.
People that were scammed will have to jump over some hurdles to track down the thieves, and some may never be able to regain what they lost.
Those that have been affected by these Venmo scammers are advising users to treat every Venmo payments as if they were checks (aka, there’s a possibility that the checks will bounce). The other precautionary measure is to only take payments from people that you know well.
Venmo has already said publicly that there are no buyer or seller protection associated with using the PayPal-owned app. Before you even consider using Venmo to accept a payment for goods or services, take thorough look at the ToS. It may just save you a lot of headaches and money in the end.
h/t: nbc
