Google added Venmo as a payment method on the Play Store on August 10, 2026. US users can link their Venmo account in the store’s payment settings and use it to pay for apps, games, in-app content, subscriptions, and creator tips. Purchases draw on the Venmo balance or on a bank account or card linked to it. For PayPal, which owns Venmo, the deal puts its peer-to-peer app at the point of sale for recurring digital purchases.
Venmo is the third wallet at Play Store checkout
In the US, the Play Store already accepted American Express AMEX, Visa , Mastercard , Discover, and JCB cards, along with PayPal for more than a decade and Cash App for a little over two years. Venmo is the third outside wallet on the list, and the second owned by PayPal, which has owned Venmo since it bought Braintree in 2013.
- Cards accepted: American Express, Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and JCB.
- Third-party wallets: PayPal, Cash App, and now Venmo.
- Outside the US: a test that lets users pay for digital purchases in cash at a nearby store.
PayPal needs Venmo to earn money beyond peer-to-peer
Venmo started as a peer-to-peer payments app, a business that earns little by design. It makes money from merchant use cases: the Venmo debit card, a checkout button at online merchants, and now app stores. In the second quarter of 2026, PayPal reported Venmo total payment volume of $93.8 billion, up 14% year over year and the seventh straight quarter of double-digit growth. Monthly active accounts using Pay with Venmo rose about 30%.
App stores control checkout for their developers
An app store holds an unusual place in the acceptance chain. Google collects payments on behalf of developers through its own billing system, keeps the payment relationship with the end user, handles fraud and refunds, and then pays developers out. The platform, not the developer, decides which payment methods buyers see. That is why the list changes slowly, one negotiated addition at a time.
The economics come down to conversion and to the share of users with no card on file. According to Sensor Tower, consumer spending on the App Store and Play Store topped $167 billion in 2025 for in-app purchases alone, up 10.6% from the year before. Every point of conversion gained at checkout applies to a base that size.
| Method | Type | Available since |
|---|---|---|
| American Express, Visa, Mastercard, Discover, JCB | Card | Long-standing |
| PayPal | Wallet | More than 10 years |
| Cash App | Wallet | More than two years |
| Venmo | Wallet | August 10, 2026 |
Google tests cash payments in other markets
Outside the US, Google is also testing cash payments for digital purchases at nearby stores. The mechanism works like a prepaid voucher: the user confirms the order, goes to a partner store, pays in cash, and the credit is applied to the account. It addresses a real constraint in countries where most people do not have a card, and it moves the point of acceptance from the phone to a network of retailers.
For PayPal, the payoff is frequency. A wallet linked to an app store gets used for every monthly subscription and every in-app purchase, whereas an online checkout button depends on an occasional shopping cart. For Google, the addition cuts drop-offs from users with no card on file. The next step is markets where neither Venmo nor Cash App exists and where local wallets hold the place that cards hold in the US.