How to cancel a Venmo payment

How To
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Follow these tips to learn how to cancel a Venmo payment

How to cancel a Venmo payment
(Image credit: Venmo)

Vemo is so easy to use and is great about making you hit Pay a second time before you part with your money, so payment mistakes rarely get made. But alas, we’re human; maybe we’ve got fat fingers and paid Joe-Smith-4 instead of our friend whose Venmo ID is Joe-Smith-3. 

The bad news is, it’s not possible to cancel a Venmo payment to an existing Venmo account. Once you send a payment, the funds are available to the recipient right away. If you need the payment returned, you must have the recipient send you a payment for the same amount.

That said, Venmo Support can reverse a payment if the recipient gives their explicit permission, their account is in good standing, and they still have the funds available in their Venmo account. (Perhaps they couldn’t pay back the sender due to technical difficulties.)

If you accidentally paid your friend twice (or made a duplicate payment)

  1. On the app, tap “Pay or Request”
  2. Enter the recipient’s user name, email, or phone number
  3. Enter the amount of one of the payments 
  4. Include a note asking them to pay you back for the money sent by mistake
  5. Tap “Request”

(Image credit: Venmo)

If you sent a payment to a phone number or email address that has not been registered with a Venmo account yet and you want to take the payment back

You can follow the same instructions on venmo.com after logging in and clicking on “Incomplete” on the homepage. (Note: Payments sent via iMessage work a bit differently. Check out this article if you sent your payment via iMessage.)

(Image credit: Venmo)

If you believe that you are the victim of a scam, or you have paid the wrong person and they won’t pay you back

Email support@venmo.com or fill out this contact form, which can be found on the app by opening the menu and clicking Get Help → Contact Us. To get to the form on venmo.com, click on Help and then click on Contact Us at the bottom of the page. 

Be sure to include the following details: 

  • Username of the person that you sent the funds to
  • Amount of the payment
  • Date of the payment
  • Username, phone number, and email address of the person that you meant to pay

If you have more questions, be sure to check our FAQ What is Venmo? as well as our guide on how to use Venmo and how to add money to Venmo. If you've paid someone by mistake, you'll want to know how to undo a Venmo payment to the wrong user. And if you're done with the service entirely, here's how to delete your Venmo account. 

Jonathan Lesser
Jonathan Lesser

Jonathan Lesser is a writer, editor and communications professional living in Pelham, N.Y. Jonathan writes about personal finance and cryptocurrencies for Tom's Guide. He has worked at two Fortune 100 financial services companies and has been published in Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, Vibe, Travel + Leisure Golf and other publications.