How do I enable Venmo on my Contribution or Ticketed Event form?

If a client has a paypal account but does NOT have a venmo account, can donors still donate using venmo through the paypal gateway (and presumably have the funds process via paypal?)

I found out some info about this!  Bonterra folks feel free to confirm or correct me: 

1. another EA superuser has confirmed to me that clients must have a Venmo account enabled on their end for Venmo to work, regardless of whether they have a PayPal Account / Gateway.  if they toggle the Venmo switch on at EA without having their own Venmo account, Venmo users will receive an error message.  The user tested this out and then confirmed with Support that the error message they received when they tested donating by Venmo failed because the client didn’t also have a Venmo account (presumably one that is connected to the same PayPal account the Gateway is tied to. Makes sense! But the instructions don’t make that explicit IMHO)  So EA Folks: I suggest the help documentation (above and elsewhere?) and EA app itself (perhaps a tooltip?) could clarify this to warn folks not to turn it on until they have a Venmo account connnected to the same PayPal account or whatever?

2. Furthermore, while this toggle to turn off/on Venmo is available on a form by form basis for regular donation forms and ticketed event forms, it’s not an option for the new Optimized Contribution Forms.  So if you have PayPal but not Venmo, you need to toggle Venmo off all your forms, but specifically if you use Optimized contribution forms you have to have Venmo turned off at the PayPal Gateway by Bonterra Support to in order to offer PayPal as a payment method on those types of forms.  Bonterra Support says the following: (highlighting added to info regarding Optimized forms) 

You should be able to turn Venmo off directly on the forms themselves, except for Optimized Contribution Forms.

For Advanced Contribution or Ticketed Event Forms:

1. Go to Step 1 – Basics.

2. After selecting your PayPal gateway under Digital Wallet Options, you should see an Enable Venmo toggle.

3. You can turn this on or off per form.

For Optimized Contribution Forms:
These intentionally expose fewer settings. Payment methods are inherited from the gateway, so there’s no per-form Venmo toggle. That behavior is expected.

If you need Venmo turned off across all forms (or if you don’t see the per-form toggle), Support can disable it for you at the Payment Gateway level.

Thanks, Rumi! Our team is looking into updating our help resources to reflect this need. Great catch and appreciate the feedback! 

Hi ​@Rumi Matsuyama and ​@Megan Dodds! I just created a test Optimized Contribution Form with one of my old PayPal Business accounts on my partner sandbox in EveryAction and was able to get a Venmo payment processed even though my old business does/did not have a Venmo account. The fund showed up in my old business PayPal account. 

I think it’s safe to say that clients do not need a separate Venmo account.  

I also think there must be some setting or agreement that clients must click or enable in the PayPal Business Account to “allow” it to accept Venmo payments (which actually just verifies the Venmo account, and then processes the funds through PayPal). 

But I cannot figure out where this setting is or what to change to tell the client.

​@Sally Heaven I assume this is related to the other thread with Vaish about Venmo options on an optimized contribution form? 

Hey ​@Liz Ragland , yes! I was searching the help files for documentation and came across this thread, so I wanted to chime in on Rumi’s statement about clients needing a separate Venmo account. Apparently they don’t!