Venmo welcomes teens as young as 13, with parent’s help

PayPal is lowering the age requirement for its popular person-to-person payments app Venmo, allowing parents of children between 13 and 17 to sign them up for a teen account.

Parents will be able to monitor transactions and manage their children’s privacy settings, according to a statement Monday. Venmo was previously only available to those 18 and older.

“Venmo is a natural place for teens to learn how to engage with money responsibly,” Erika Sanchez, vice president and general manager of Venmo, said in a statement.

Venmo joins a bevy of apps and services that have launched a financial product for teenagers. Just 49% of teens have opened a bank account in the U.S., according to Fidelity. That’s left companies racing to capture the next generation of financial services customers.

PayPal has spent months testing the technology internally and executives have long said the move would allow them to expand the total addressable market for Venmo. In March, the company said it already counts the parents of about 9 million teens between the ages of 13 and 17 as customers.

The teen accounts will have a separate balance from their parent’s personal accounts and will come with their own debit card, and parents can choose whether to grant access to the Venmo app itself. The company will roll out the new service to select customers in June before making it widely available, Venmo said.