We spent the summer scraping Venmo's public API, enabling us to get an unprecedented real-time as well as historic read on Venmo's growth and user dynamics.
Below a summery of our findings.
We'll follow up with a more in-depth paper in the coming weeks.
ark-invest.com/research/venmo…
Below a summery of our findings.
We'll follow up with a more in-depth paper in the coming weeks.
ark-invest.com/research/venmo…
We believe that the no. of annual active Venmo users grew from 40 million at 3/31/19, as reported by PayPal, to close to 50 million by end of Sep.
Venmo thereby likely has the largest no. of deposit account customers in the US. (JPMC's ~52m includes non-deposit products)
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Venmo thereby likely has the largest no. of deposit account customers in the US. (JPMC's ~52m includes non-deposit products)
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We scraped the total transaction history of 4,300+ Venmo users, totaling 400,000+ transactions - enabling us to analyze each quarterly cohort since Venmo's inception. One of the most striking findings: Negative monthly churn rates for most cohorts even years after sign-up..
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.. In other words, users come back onto platform even after being inactive for months/years. We think of this as a testament to Venmo's still healthy network characteristics. It makes sense: Paying s.o. back is a social liability and turns uncomfortable if not executed.
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Our analysis indicates that there were ~23m monthly active Venmo users as of September 2019. We estimate they will grow to nearly 70m by 2024.
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Venmo's avg. transaction size is ~$74, with monthly transactions per MAU accelerating since early 2018.
Despite this, our cohort analysis showed that 2017 and 2018 generally were weaker cohorts. We think some of that weakness is due to competitive pressure from Cash App.
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Despite this, our cohort analysis showed that 2017 and 2018 generally were weaker cohorts. We think some of that weakness is due to competitive pressure from Cash App.
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Finally, our research suggests that Square's Cash App number of MAUs already has overtaken Venmo. This is due to 1. Targeting of an underserved customer group which use Cash App as more as a simple P2P payments application. 2. Rapid product innovation (Bitcoin,..
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.. Direct Deposits, Cash Card, Boost, upcoming stock trading). 3. A Savvy marketing strategy, which we detailed in an earlier blog post: ark-invest.com/research/squar….
Venmo and Cash App, we think of them as Digital Wallets, are taking over the US. Stay tuned for the full report.
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Venmo and Cash App, we think of them as Digital Wallets, are taking over the US. Stay tuned for the full report.
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Also, based on our analysis, we estimate that Venmo's TPV will be approx. $27 Billion for the third quarter.
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