Withdrawing a Venmo balance can test the limits of anyone’s patience (unless you’re in the beta program), but dayslong bank transfers used to be what it took to get your roommate’s rent check. Thankfully, that’s changing with the launch of Venmo’s web payments feature.
Starting today, Venmo users can shop and make purchases at any of the 2 million United States retailers that have teamed up with PayPal, Venmo’s parent company.
Venmo supported online payments previously, but only from a curated list of partners from Braintree, a PayPal-owned payments processor. “We’re dramatically expanding the number of places you can use Venmo to pay by leveraging the unrivaled scale of the PayPal merchant network,” Bill Ready, PayPal’s COO, wrote in a blog post.
Here’s how it works: When you stumble upon a website run by a participating retailer, you’ll see a button to pay via PayPal at checkout (and in the coming weeks a Venmo/PayPal dual-branded button). Clicking on will pull up a selection screen with your Venmo account, and from there, you’ll have have the option of paying the bill’s full amount or splitting it among friends.
There’s a caveat though: You can’t pay with Venmo on your desktop. Payments only work on mobile websites in apps that already support PayPal. But Venmo’s promising a fix in short order.
“Our vision for Venmo is to not only be the go-to app for payments between friends, but also a ubiquitous digital wallet that helps consumers spend wherever and however they want to pay, regardless of device,” Ready said. “Through 2017 and beyond, we will continue to evolve the payments experience that has helped make Venmo a cultural staple, while also applying that same magic to split, share and pay in new ways.”
It remains to be seen whether or not retailers take the bait, though — Venmo charges a processing fee for each transaction. But for some, the platform’s enormous volume ($8 billion last year, according to PayPal) might just make it irresistible.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Samsung’s scandal over its Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, has returned with a bill attached. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has tentatively fined the company 20.1 billion won, or about $15.1 million, over gaming claims made for the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S22, and Tab S8.
The regulator says Samsung promoted the devices as gaming powerhouses without disclosing that GOS placed preset CPU and GPU limits on certain demanding games. Samsung disputes that conclusion, calling GOS a legitimate way to manage heat.