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For years, PayPal has maintained two separate peer-to-peer payment services, though the brand it promotes most often for this capability is Venmo. But Venmo users have not been able to send money outside of the United States, limiting its utility. Now, that’s changed. Early Monday, PayPal announced a new link between the two platforms allows Venmo users to send money to, and receive money from, a legion of PayPal users in 90 countries.
“By bringing these two ecosystems together, we’re making it seamless for Venmo and PayPal users to pay one another without friction or borders,” says Diego Scotti, general manager for PayPal’s consumer group, in a statement.
PayPal argues the move responds to a pressing competitive need as its research indicates more than half of 2,000 app users surveyed in February would use an app like Venmo if it would let them send money overseas. Venmo says it will waive international transfer fees through Aug. 24, though it cautions that the new service will not be available in all areas of the world where PayPal is available.
Observers applaud the move to expand Venmo’s reach but question why the company didn’t make the move before now. “It’s hard to understand why this wasn’t done sooner, although I suspect there were technical incompatibilities or organizational hurdles to overcome,” says Aaron McPherson, principal at AFM Consulting LLC, in a note to Digital Transactions News.
The move “maximizes the reach of both [PayPal and Venmo],” McPherson notes. “It’s a bit of a return to PayPal’s roots as a P2P service, after a long time pursuing the buy button strategy. For myself, I use both, so it may make things a little easier. It depends on how well integrated the two services are.”
“Providing interoperability between the PayPal and Venmo networks for cross-border money transfers is a fabulous move,” says Eric Grover, principal at Intrepid Ventures, though he too questions why the move wasn’t made sooner. “Cross-border money transfers and retail payments remain very richly priced. Interoperability between the two platforms abroad will boost network engagement. It will also bring additional users into PayPal’s global payment network, substantially increasing its value by unlocking access to PayPal’s nearly 440 million active global accounts.”
A popular platform PayPal acquired in 2013 as part of its $800-million acquisition of the processing platform Braintree, Venmo remains a fast-growing product for PayPal. For the fourth quarter of 2025, it accounted for $85 billion in payment volume, up 13% year-over-year. The quarter’s dollar volume was also 78% of the company’s total P2P volume, according to statistics released by PayPal. Venmo’s growth had accelerated, rising from 10% in the same quarter of 2024.
