Does Venmo work internationally? Worldwide alternatives for 2026

What is Venmo?

Venmo is a payment app owned by PayPal that allows you to send and request money from friends, usually for free, and is especially useful when you don’t carry cash. Splitting lunch, utilities and cab fares are typical uses, and many stores and apps also accept Venmo at checkout.

Venmo has become extremely popular. According to PayPal’s fourth-quarter 2025 results, Venmo passed 100 million active accounts in 2025, with 67 million monthly active accounts and about $1.7 billion in revenue. In the second quarter of 2026 alone, users moved $93.8 billion through the app, 14% more than a year earlier.

Users particularly like the ease of use and the lack of fees on most transactions. According to Venmo’s fees page:

• Sending money from your Venmo balance, bank account or debit card is free;
• Paying with a credit card costs 3%;
• Standard transfers to your bank are free and take 1 to 3 business days;
• Instant transfers cost 1.75%, with a minimum of $0.25 and a maximum of $25;
• Selling goods and services on a personal profile costs the seller 2.99%.

You can also make payments when your Venmo balance is insufficient, since the app draws the difference from a linked bank account or card.

Which countries is Venmo available in?

Venmo accounts are only available to US residents. The Venmo User Agreement sets out who can open a personal account:

• Residency: you must be a resident of the United States or one of its territories;
• Age: at least 18, or the age of majority in your state. Teens aged 13 to 17 can use a Teen Account opened by a parent;
• Bank account: you need a US bank account;
• Identity: you must provide a Social Security number or taxpayer identification number;
• Phone: a mobile number that you own.

Venmo has not announced plans to open accounts in other countries. What has changed is who a US Venmo user can pay, which we cover next.

If you are specifically in Europe, we go deeper in our article on whether Venmo works in Europe.

Can you send money abroad with Venmo?

Yes, since March 2026, but only to PayPal users. On 23 March 2026, PayPal let Venmo users in the US send and receive money internationally with PayPal users in more than 90 countries, in 25 currencies. The person abroad does not need Venmo, only a PayPal account in one of the supported markets.

In practice, that means:

• A US Venmo user can pay you if you live in Europe, the UK, Canada or Australia and have PayPal, and you can pay them back from PayPal;
• You can’t request money from a Venmo user through PayPal. Cross-platform requests are not supported yet;
• You still can’t open a Venmo account outside the US.

What it costs

The introductory fee waiver announced with the launch ended on 24 August 2026, so international payments now carry the fees listed on Venmo’s fees page:

The transfer fee is capped, but the currency conversion isn’t. On a $1,000 payment converted into euros, conversion can cost up to $40, eight times the $4.99 transfer fee. For larger or regular transfers, a service built for international transfers, such as Wise, which uses the mid-market rate, is often cheaper.

What about PayPal World?

In July 2025, PayPal announced PayPal World, a project to connect Venmo and PayPal with India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), China’s Weixin Pay (WeChat Pay) and Latin America’s Mercado Pago. As of September 2026, it only works for shopping: UPI and WeChat Pay users can pay some US PayPal merchants, and US PayPal users can pay WeChat Pay merchants in China. Sending money between people across these wallets is still listed as “coming soon”, so a Venmo user can’t yet pay someone on UPI or WeChat.

Venmo alternatives worldwide

If you live outside the US, the following apps are the closest to Venmo. All of them let you send money to other users by username, phone number or link, and most also handle transfers between countries.

• Wise: Built for international transfers. Wise lets you send money to 80 countries and hold and convert 40+ currencies in a multi-currency account, using the mid-market exchange rate plus a transparent fee shown upfront, from 0.24%. Other Wise users can be paid by their Wisetag, a username similar to a Venmo handle. Its debit card works in 150+ countries. Wise had 18.9 million active customers in the year to March 2026, and you can find more in our Wise statistics.
• Revolut: A digital bank with over 80 million customers in 40 markets, including the European Economic Area (EEA), the UK, the US, Australia, Brazil, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore. Transfers to other Revolut users are free and you can pay or request money through a Revtag. On the free Standard plan, currency exchange is free up to £1,000 a month in the UK or $1,000 in the US, after which a fair usage fee applies. See our Revolut countries guide for the full list.
• Vivid Money: A Berlin-based fintech where users can send and request money and invest in stocks, ETFs, cryptocurrencies, and commodities. Vivid has shifted its primary focus to business banking for small companies and freelancers. Personal accounts remain available, though investing now carries a 1€ per-trade fee on euro-denominated shares and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Vivid accepts residents of 10 countries: Austria, Cyprus, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.
• N26: A popular digital bank with a full German banking licence, available in 21 European countries, including Switzerland. You can send money instantly to other N26 users and request it from them. N26 left the UK in April 2020 and closed its US accounts in January 2022, so it is now a Europe-only, euro-account service.
• Monzo: A UK digital bank with 15.2 million customers in March 2026, offering instant fee-free payments between UK users. It received a full Irish banking licence in December 2025 and has started offering accounts in Ireland. Monzo left the US: all Monzo US accounts were closed as of 8 June 2026.
• PayPal: A global platform to send and receive money for both personal and business use, available in more than 200 countries and regions and 25 currencies (in mainland China, it can only be used to pay people outside China). It is also the only app here that a US Venmo user can pay directly. If you send from a US PayPal account instead of Venmo, PayPal charges the same 5% (minimum $0.99, maximum $4.99) plus a 3% conversion fee, against Venmo’s up to 4%. PayPal’s fees vary by country, so check your local fees page before sending larger amounts.

The Venmo equivalent in your country

For splitting a bill with friends in your own country, you rarely need an international app. Most major economies now have a domestic instant payment system that works like Venmo, usually inside your normal banking app and usually free for consumers. You pay someone with their phone number, email or a quick response (QR) code shown on their phone. Here are the main ones:

Some of these systems are enormous. India’s UPI handled 24.5 billion payments in August 2026 alone, according to the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). Brazil’s Pix is used by 148 million individuals, and Spain’s Bizum had 30.6 million users at the end of 2025.

A few notes on the table:

• Wero: the wallet of the European Payments Initiative (EPI), owned by European banks, had 60 million users in September 2026 and is replacing national brands. It replaced Paylib in France, is replacing Payconiq in Belgium and Luxembourg (the Payconiq platform closes on 30 September 2026) and will absorb iDEAL in the Netherlands by 2027. You can already pay someone in Germany, France or Belgium from any of the three;
• Linking the European apps: Bizum (Spain), MB WAY (Portugal) and Bancomat Pay (Italy) already exchange payments across borders, and in February 2026 they agreed with EPI and Vipps MobilePay to connect with Wero, with cross-border payments between people planned for 2026 and shopping for 2027;
• New Zealand: there is no national phone-number system yet. People pay each other by bank account number, and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is consulting on instant payments until 27 October 2026;
• Mexico: SPEI is the central bank’s interbank transfer system, and DiMo (Dinero Móvil) lets you send through it using only a phone number;
• Fees: Pix is free for individuals by rule, and PayNow is free for retail customers. Elsewhere, pricing is set by each bank, so check yours.