The news: The Venmo Credit Card will offer 4% cash back for restaurant, food delivery, streaming, and event purchases split with friends, per a press release.

To get the boosted reward, Venmo cardholders have to select the purchase they wish to split post-purchase. Users can add notes to personalize their settling up. 

How we got here: Zelle is eating P2P players’ payment volume for lunch.

• US consumers and businesses sent over $1.2 trillion using Zelle during 2025, up 20% YoY. 
• Total transactions grew 16% to 4.2 billion.
• Zelle moved $3.4 billion per day on average.

And 100 million US bank and credit union accounts used Zelle in December 2025. 

This dominance is unflagging: We forecast that Zelle will rake in $932.97 billion in P2P payment volume—roughly $600 billion more than rival Venmo. (Our forecast excludes business-to-business and consumer-to-business volume.)

Venmo wants to own more than just the settling up that happens after a weekend with friends—it wants to power the transactions that turn into P2P volume: concert tickets, takeout orders, or dinners at buzzy restaurants. That’s broadly turf where Zelle can’t compete; gaining traction there could reinforce Venmo’s use for P2P later.

Implications for P2P: Rewards certainly help stickiness, but they still have their limitations. 

Venmo users only earn an extra 1% cash back for splitting card transactions with friends. However, the overwhelming majority of credit card transactions don’t need to be split with friends, making the benefit’s effect on Venmo credit card applications more muted.

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