PayPal is launching a Venmo credit card to help monetize the payment app
Venmo is moving from enabling payments with emojis on a phone to a more traditional method. The popular app, owned by PayPal , will offer a Venmo-branded credit card in 2020, the company announced Thursday. Synchrony Financial will handle the banking side of the card. The app started with peer-to-peer payments and became famous for incorporating a social network with the ability to "like" and comment on friends' transactions. Venmo has since brought in 40 million users, launched a debit card last year and offers a "pay with Venmo" option with partners like Uber. "The next natural extension was to have a Venmo credit card," Darrell Esch, senior vice president of credit at PayPal, told CNBC. "This rounds out what was otherwise a gap with the debit card."

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Venmo was acquired for $26 million by Braintree in 2012, and PayPal bought Braintree a year later. It joins a list of tech names that have offered credit cards to increase profits and engage customers. Apple was the most recent high-profile example in a partnership with Goldman Sachs to launch the Apple Card. Amazon offers credit cards and uses Synchrony for its most recent secured card. PayPal is not a bank, so in order to offer bank-like products, it relies on FDIC-insured Synchrony. It's an increasingly popular setup for fintech companies that don't have a bank charter. Although Synchrony Financial is the one handling the banking side, customers won't be logging onto Synchrony's website. Instead, they pay bills directly on the Venmo app. They can also opt to share payment history on their social feed, split purchases with other people, and get real-time alerts to monitor card activity. PayPal said some of the details, like rewards and cash back, are still being determined.

Monetizing Venmo