Venmo API Hackathon

We’re hosting a hackathon at Venmo HQ Frday, 23 Apr starting at 3PM.

Please come join us if you’re interested in learning about and playing with Venmo API v1.  Bring your own ideas if you have them, or if you don’t, learn about the apps our users are begging for someone to build.  Our friends from DuckDuckGo are joining us, so it should be tons of fun!

Hackers, entrepreneurs, students, and Philly startup-ers are all welcome to come hang out for the afternoon and stick around for an evening BBQ.

See you all soon!

RSVP on Meetup.com
http://www.meetup.com/venmo-meetup/calendar/13161971/

or Groupomatic
http://www.groupomatic.com/haqsm3vj

Lookup Contact Details for Anyone via SMS: Introducing the About Command

We added a useful little SMS feature over the weekend that helps you find more info about someone before sending a payment: the About Command.

To view details about any Venmo user, text

“about cafegrumpy”

to 646.863.9557 (VENMO)

We’ll respond with contact info for that user like this:

Venmo info: cafegrumpy
N: Cafe Grumpy
T: @cafegrumpy
P: [if user has added you as financial contact, you can view their phone #]
B: Coffee shop 20th btw 7th+8th

Enjoy the new feature and the lovely springtime weather!

* Pro tip: try using “About 646” to get information about any area code!

Quicktip: “bal” command

Here’s an easy way to recover your Venmo username on the go if you’ve forgotten it: text “bal” to Venmo at 646.863.9557. The response text will give you your account balance and username. This is handy if you want a friend to pay you and can’t remember your account name. Of course, you can always invoice someone by texting “$__ from [username/phone number]” to Venmo!

Got any questions, comments, or feedback? As always, let us know on Twitter.

Create a Typo Bounty Link for Your Email Signature and Own Your Mistakes

Typographical and grammatical errors in correspondence are a great way to tell a recipient that you did not spend much effort or time composing your message. I have been keen to eliminate these errors from any emails, chats, blog posts, or even text messages that I write, and as a way to help enforce this habit I now include in my email signature a link to invoice me if you catch me making a mistake.

Here’s what it looks like:

I used a new feature we have that allows you to create a payment or invoice link to any user page. You can use a simple form to easily create a typo-bounty link of your own with our payment link builder tool. ( I created a short link,charge.kortina.net, and you could also use a Bitly link to pretty this up for your signature: http://bit.ly/charge-kortina.)

Just enter your Venmo username, an amount you would like to be charged, and a note explaining that you are rewarding anyone who catches you making a mistake.

Payment links are pretty flexible—instead of making a link that prompts someone to charge you, you could also make a link asking someone to pay you for something cool you wrote or a service you provided them. We’ll write up some more interesting and detailed examples of payment and invoice links soon, so stay tuned.

Also, let us know if you create a cool payment or invoice link of your own!

Venmo Wins Mobile Monday Mid Atlantic Demo Night

Monday, we got a chance to present at Mobile Monday Demo Night, where we shared Venmo with a great crowd and helped the Relief Foundation raise some money for their project to build an orphanage in Haiti.

On January 25th, Venmo presented at Mobile Monday Mid Atlantic Demo Night, a gathering of the top mobile technology companies in the region.

Venmo won this annual competition by engaging the audience in the most interactive presentation of the evening. The founders, Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail, spent only 2 of their 5 minute presentation explaining the company, which allows anyone to send or collect money by sending a text message. Citing the recent campaign by the Red Cross that engaged thousands of people and raised millions of dollars for relief efforts in Haiti in only a few days, they explained that now anyone can collect money in a similar way via Venmo’s text message payments service.

For the remaining 3 minutes of the presentation, Kortina and Magdon asked the audience to try the product by making live donations to the Relief Foundation, an organization sending a delegate of 120 people to Haiti to build an orphanage. Audience members texted “pay relief 20 to help haiti” to the Venmo number (646.863.9557) and were able to contribute hundreds of dollars in a matter of minutes. In less than a week, the Relief Foundation has raised over $15,000 through Venmo text message donations, $600 of which was raised in the 3 minute demo during the presentation.

In order to engage communities around organizations and businesses accepting Venmo mobile payments, the service also integrates tightly with social networking services like Twitter and Facebook, allowing people, businesses, and charities to share their favorite donations and payments to favorite local spots with their friends on these networks.

To learn more about accepting Venmo as a non-profit or a business, please send an e-mail to info@venmo.com.

Learn more about Venmo for Non-Profit organizations here:  Accept text message donations for non-profit organizations