Last Updated on 06/29/2021 by GS Staff
How To Buy Venmo Stock
Venmo alone is not publicly traded. However, its parent company, PayPal, is a public company. You can invest in PayPal but your investment will be in more than just Venmo as we will explain later. PayPal trades under the stock symbol PYPL on the Nasdaq. Shares are readily available for purchase through most online brokers such as Ally Invest, Etrade, Charles Schwab, and more.
What Does PayPal Own
PayPal is a bit more complex than the obvious money-transfer services of PayPal and Venmo. The company is also involved in these primary businesses:
- Braintree – It provides automated online payments for merchants and businesses online. It allows customers to pay with the major cards, PayPal, and PayPal Credit.
- Xoom – It permits customers in the United States and Canada to send money, reload mobile phones, and pay bills internationally to over 130 countries. PayPal acquired this business in 2015 for $890 million.
- Hyperwallet – This subsidiary of PayPal focuses on global payout technology for businesses. It permits numerous or mass payments to contract workers, sellers, claimants, and more.
- Zettle – This subsidiary provides point-of-sale (POS) products that allow payments and the ability to track sales.
- Venmo – It provides mobile payment services that allow users to send and receive funds. There are over 70 million active users of this peer-to-peer technology.
- PayPal – It is used for business or personal uses to get paid or be paid.
When Did PayPal Acquire Venmo?
Venmo was started by Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail as a way to make payments to peers without having to use cash or check. Venmo was created in 2009 and was purchased by Braintree in 2012 for $26 million. PayPal paid $800 million to acquire Braintree in 2013. Since Venmo was a part of Braintree, PayPal acquired Venmo with the Braintree deal. PayPal was a subsidiary of eBay at the time but has since been spun off into its own company.
Will Venmo Ever Be Its Own Stock?
The most likely way that Venmo would be its own stock would be from a spinoff from PayPal similar to how PayPal was spun off from eBay. Spinoffs often are a good way to unlock the value of a subsidiary that isn’t being realized under the parent company. However, there is no guarantee that this will happen in the foreseeable future or ever. PayPal has said in the past that PayPal and Venmo work well together under the same roof. John Rainey, PayPal’s chief financial officer told Yahoo Finance in 2018 that, “There are a lot of synergies from running both on the same platform.”
Venmo is one of the strongest areas of growth for PayPal which the company will likely keep under its wing (at least in the short-term) as it continues to innovate the platform to allow consumers to both spend and pay. Venmo processed $159 billion in payment volume during 2020 according to Business of Apps. Compare this to 2018 when the payments processed were $62 billion and you can see how explosive the growth has been.
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