There is one particular experience that many college students have shared, including me, over the past year. A strange and 
unfamiliar word quickly became part of everyday, college-life jargon: Venmo.
“Oh, no worries, I’ll just Venmo you.”
Yes, Venmo has become a verb on many college campuses.
The money transfer application makes paying a friend or roommate back for a meal, a concert, or anything else as easy as pulling out your smartphone.
Users can choose to link their bank account, debit card, or credit card to their Venmo account to gain access to a digital wallet with a simple and easily navigable interface.
Along with many of my peers, I jumped on the Venmo bandwagon with no hesitation.
The app makes money transfer incredibly convenient, and has become the expected mode of payment at many colleges and universities. As more and more of people download the application, my wallet becomes closer and closer to obsolete.
GeekWire headed to the University of Washington to ask students for their thoughts about the money transfer app, and their experiences using it to try to get some idea of how prevalent Venmo really is.
Do you use Venmo? If so, why?
Maddy Austin, junior: “Yes I use it because not everyone has cash on them all the time. It’s a lot easier to get it instantly. I use it for a large range of things like food, or if someone wants me to pick up something from the store for them.
Obviously there are other uses as well. It’s just way more convenient than paying with cash all the time because I personally never have cash. I only ever pay with a debit card so it makes my life easier.
At least 70 percent of my friends use it. Venmo is one of the few services that I do use in terms of online payments other than reputably websites like amazon. It’s one of the ones that I trust because it’s so popular and so many people use it. I started using it about a year ago.”
Kenny Young, junior: “No, I don’t use Venmo. I prefer either Paypal or Google Wallet because I have been using them since they came out.
I don’t use them often though. We use cash or we just pay each other back some other time. If I pay for the meal this time, they will get it another time.”
Jared Olsen, PhD candidate: “Oh, absolutely. It’s very convenient and easy to pay friends or roommates for utilities like paying rent, water, or trash or just for having fun. It’s a lot more convenient than going to the bank to get cash. You can terminate the application if someone steals your phone so it’s really fool proof.
People do their banking online on their phone too and if you are not smart enough to try taking measures to know how to disable your phone when you do banking on it, Venmo should shut down too. I have been using it a little over a year.
Most of my friends are using it and the ones that aren’t always think it’s really convenient when I sit them down and show them and pay a friend sitting next to me. I think it’s really really convenient.”
Natalia Parker, senior: “I haven’t heard of it. The concept sounds super useful as long as it was really safe and tested.
I think I would be worried about security. I usually just got to the ATM to pay people back which is not that convenient. I’ll definitely look it up now.”
Kelly Kingma, sophomore: “I have heard of it but I don’t have it yet. A lot of my friends who go to school in California have used it. I haven’t heard of any of my friends on UW campus doing it.
But when all of my friends came back from school in California they said ‘oh put on your Venmo’ and I had no idea what they were saying. I was going to a Mariner’s game with all of my friends and they all transferred money with Venmo and I had to go write a random check because I had no idea what was going on.
I would usually just use cash with my friends from around here.”
Tiffany Ho, senior: “Yes I do use it. It’s convenient to pay my friends back for things from the bar, beer, Uber, and so on.
I would say maybe 50 to 70 percent of my friends use it. The main reason for the ones that don’t is safety and security. They aren’t really sure if it’s a good idea to have an app with all their information on there.”
Garett Brooks, fifth-year: “Yeah, I use it for paying my friends when we go out to eat. Specifically I remember one friend bought a really big inflatable that we used on the lake. So 10 people just split it up. If it comes up in conversation most people say they use it.”
