The Proper Etiquette of the Venmo Nudge

A Venmo representative shared data with NPR's The Indicator: about 40% of people take a week or more to settle up debts with friends. The app itself had more than 100 million active accounts at the end of last year and generated $1.7 billion for parent company PayPal, mostly from fees on extras and interest on balances. Most people pay their Venmo requests back within the same day. But a substantial minority do not—and the frictionless ease of transferring money has, paradoxically, made the social problem of asking for repayment harder, not easier.

Why digital payments made us sloppier

British etiquette coach William Hansen argues that the very convenience of payment apps has eroded our norms around repayment. "With all of these sort of labor saving devices and technologies that we have, it's actually made us sloppier," he says. "It probably has pushed us in the complete opposite direction to how you would think it would make us go." When a notification can be swiped away with no immediate social consequence, delay becomes the path of least resistance. Hansen's own experience illustrates the point: he paid to refill a gas tank for a barbecue host and is still waiting to be repaid, despite the friend knowing full well the money is owed. "It's almost got to the sort of fairly amusing point now where I think they know what they'r