PayPal and Venmo on NXT Online Donation Forms

Sara Niemiec

My org has set up a charity PayPal account and wants to make it an available payment option on our NXT online donation forms. I've set this up before, so I know how to do that part. My question is… Does anyone know if, after making the necessary connections on the back end, only PayPal will appear as an option and not also Venmo if a Venmo account does not exist for an org? Is it a both or none situation? Venmo has posed a challenge to my team recently, so we really only want PayPal as a payment option. I would appreciate any insights!

Cortney Moore

@Sara Niemiec my understanding is because Venmo is owned by PayPal the org doesn't need a Venmo account. We don't have a Venmo account and the Venmo option does show up under PayPal as an option on our online giving form. I don't think you can remove it once you set up the PayPal integration. I didn't see a way to do it. We have had people give through Venmo (especially when they are giving a smaller amount and don't have cash) and I don't think we have had any issues. What challenges has Venmo posed for your team? I always like to be aware of challenges our team might face. Thanks for the question and sharing!

Sara Niemiec

@Cortney Moore, thanks for your response. It's very helpful. A follow-up question for you: if your org doesn't have a Venmo account, how do you transfer the donations people send through Venmo? I have occasionally seen Venmo donations appear in PayPal, so we transfer them to our account through PP, but not all of the V gifts show up in PP.

A former coworker of mine set up our PayPal and Venmo account about a year ago. About seven months after setup, out of nowhere, Venmo flagged the bank account we used for transferring donations as "bad," and now the funds in our Venmo account are essentially stuck there unless we submit new banking info. Venmo customer support told me to check for ACH holds or limitations placed on the bank account, but my finance person said there were none. My finance team created this specific bank account we use for PayPal and Venmo specifically for PP/V so that if something was compromised, the repercussions would be limited. I don't want to ask them to create another bank account just for Venmo since PayPal money transfers work just fine. And who knows how long this new banking info would be accepted before it, too, would be flagged as "bad." Additionally, I discovered from Venmo customer support that you cannot change the human name associated with the org Venmo account; it's not one of their "features." So, every time there's turnover and you want to change the human name associated with your org's Venmo account, you must create a brand-new Venmo account for your charity. I asked Venmo customer support if, when I create a new charity account, that I could use the previously flagged banking info. They said they didn't know, and that the only way to find out was to try. I have no interest in going through the process of creating a new Venmo account for my charity, only to find out that the banking info doesn't work on it.

Cortney Moore

@Sara Niemiec Thanks for this detailed reply! Wow! That sounds rough with the issues you have experienced. Definitely not user friendly. We haven't had any of these issues and the Venmo donations that we have received have shown up in our PayPal account. We haven't had any not show up but we haven't had many transactions yet. This makes me want to be cautious about how much we promote the Venmo option. We wanted to have it available for fundraising events that our faith partners host, specifically with their youth groups, because people wanted to give a few dollars and they didn't have cash and didn't want to use a credit card. Now we can accept direct debit through the online giving forms so that might help. It would be nice to remove Venmo especially with these types of issues you mention, and only have PayPal. Again, what a bummer and thank you for sharing as I was not aware of these types of frustrating hassles.