Venmo Is Getting Its Biggest Makeover in Years — Here's What's Actually Changing
If you haven't opened Venmo in a while, it's about to look very different when you do.
Venmo is rolling out its biggest redesign since 2021 — a sweeping overhaul of the app that changes everything from how the feed looks to how new users are onboarded, and adds a new privacy default that the company probably should have implemented years ago. The rollout begins this week and is expected to reach all users by fall 2026.
What's Actually Changing
The redesign reorganizes the app around three core tabs: Send, Money, and Rewards.
Send puts your most frequent contacts front and center, streamlines group bill splitting for up to 30 people at once, and adds features for gifts and scheduled payments — things you could arguably do before but buried several taps deep.
Money centralizes expense management, Teen Accounts, and crypto access. Rewards pulls all limited-time offers and cash back opportunities into one place, including Venmo's Stash program, which pays up to 5% cash back on purchases at select merchants directly into your Venmo Mastercard Debit Card.
Venmo's senior VP and general manager Alexis Sowa acknowledged the honest reason behind the redesign: user research showed most people had no idea how many features the app already had. "Venmo is not just a tool for splitting the check anymore," Sowa said. "It has become an everyday financial companion."
New merchants accepting Venmo include Sephora, Ulta, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut — brands that reflect where younger users already spend their money.
The Privacy Fix That's Long Overdue
The change getting the most attention isn't the new tabs or the rewards program. It's the default privacy setting.
For years, Venmo has operated with a public-by-default feed — meaning your transactions and the messages that accompanied them were visible to anyone unless you actively changed your settings. Security researchers flagged the problem as early as 2018. The same vulnerability was used as recently as 2024 to surface embarrassing details about a prominent political figure from their public transaction history. PayPal, which owns Venmo, repeatedly declined to fix it, describing the public feed as a feature rather than a bug.
That's changing now. New users signing up for Venmo will have their posts visible only to friends by default instead of the general public. Existing users can adjust their settings manually. It's a significant shift in how the app's social contract works — and one that privacy advocates have been pushing for nearly a decade.
The Part Nobody Is Saying Out Loud
The timing of this redesign is hard to ignore. PayPal is restructuring to spin Venmo off as a standalone business unit — a move widely interpreted as preparation for a potential sale. Stripe has reportedly expressed interest in buying PayPal outright. A visually compelling, freshly redesigned app with new commerce integrations and a cleaned-up privacy reputation is considerably easier to sell than a cluttered one with a decade of bad press about data exposure.
Whether the redesign is genuine product innovation or strategic window-dressing ahead of a transaction, the changes are real and most of them are improvements. If you've been meaning to dig into your Venmo settings for years and never got around to it, the app is about to do some of that work for you.
Curious for more stories that keep you informed and entertained? From the latest headlines to everyday insights, YourLifeBuzz has more to explore. Dive into what’s next.