Amazon customers will be able to checkout with Venmo in 2022, which should drive the app’s revenues.

Amazon is adding Venmo as a payment method to reach younger shoppers: The partnership marks progress in PayPal’s efforts to monetize the mobile app and may pave the way for similar deals.

The payments firm’s total payment volume hit a whopping $311 billion—and it will likely sustain that momentum as it dives deeper into BNPL and cryptocurrencies and builds out Venmo and its in-store payments business.

The peer-to-peer payments firm kiboshed its global public feed and made its app more user-friendly—helping it become more attractive and push traffic to newer products, like Venmo Card.

The news: Effective January 1, 2022, payment apps like PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App are required to report users’ business payments that exceed $600 in a calendar year to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), per NBC News.

Venmo. Verizon. Vox. Wells Fargo. Williams-Sonoma.

Amid a much-needed monetization push, Venmo has augmented its core offering with a robust ecosystem that embraces Pay With Venmo, rewards, credit and debit cards, and crypto integration, with more, including buy now, pay later (BNPL), on the horizon.

Apple launched a credit card in August 2019, and despite shunning the label, Venmo is looking increasingly like a neobank. Meanwhile, Google’s “Plex” bank accounts (digital user experiences built on top of accounts provided by incumbent partner banks) are slated for a full rollout this year.

PayPal outpaces Venmo

Hundreds of US retail banks to take plunge into Bitcoin trading: Banking tech provider FIS and crypto custodian NYDIG are teaming up with smaller incumbents to offer Bitcoin trading—enabling established banks to compete with challengers like Revolut and Venmo.

And though the Synchrony-Venmo model can’t compete with ultra-premium cards or T&E cobrands, these providers could adapt the experience by adding flexibility among different travel categories or specific brand partners. Customer choice. Issuers have historically offered predefined rewards categories that serve as the determinant of primary card status.

PayPal could also let users make peer-to-peer payments with the currency through its app or via Venmo. The big takeaway: A proprietary stablecoin could help boost PayPal’s revenues, but it would need to adapt to the shifting regulatory landscape: Although no official rules have been created, research and efforts to build a regulatory framework are underway in the US.

Since the acquisition, PayPal has doubled down on digital currencies by launching Checkout with Crypto, Cash Back to Crypto for Venmo credit cardholders, and a crypto price alert feature. In May, PayPal purchased Chargehound, a company that helps merchants automate chargeback recovery.

And banks are starting to offer crypto services to keep customers on their platforms: Customers are increasingly using exchanges, and challengers like Venmo and Revolut already offer trading. Several large wealth managers, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, partnered with fintechs like NYDIG to offer their clients exposure to Bitcoin.

Services running on AWS servers that went offline included Disney Plus and Delta Airlines; network games like PUBG, League of Legends, and Valorant; various Amazon services like Kindle ebooks, Amazon Music, and Ring cameras; as well as Tinder, Roku, Coinbase, and Venmo, among others.

And Amazon recently enabled alternative payment solutions like Venmo and Affirm, so its share is likely to keep growing into 2022.

Consumer credit cards seemed like the logical next step for Block, especially considering that rival PayPal launched the Venmo Credit Card. Why we’re not calling it a loss: Although Block didn’t launch small-business or consumer credit cards like we anticipated, it is planning to acquire Australia-based buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm Afterpay—which is an alternative lender.