'Does Venmo accept prepaid cards?': How to add a prepaid card to Venmo and use it to send money

• Venmo does accept some prepaid cards, as long as they're from American Express, Discover, MasterCard, or Visa.
• Once you've linked the prepaid card to Venmo, you can send money to friends from it.
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Venmo, one of the most popular iOS and Android money transfer apps out there, makes it easy to pay friends and request money with the tap of a finger, all from your phone.

Of course, for this to work, the app has to be linked to a bank account, credit, or debit card.

Venmo can hook up to multiple cards, and this does include some prepaid cards — Venmo accepts prepaid or gift cards from American Express, Discover, MasterCard, and Visa. So, if you have a gift card from any of those brands, you can add them to your account.

Venmo's website does warn that there are some stipulations on this: "Cards may be declined by the card issuer or Venmo for funds availability or fraud prevention reasons. Also, some payment cards may require a zip code to be linked to your account." So, if adding a prepaid card doesn't work, those are probably the reasons why.

However, in most situations, adding a gift card from any of the brands listed above should be no problem. Here's how to do it.

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How to link a prepaid card to Venmo

1. Open the Venmo app.

2. Tap the menu button — the three horizontal lines — in the top-left corner of the screen.

3. Tap "Settings," the second option from the bottom.

4. Under "Preferences" in the Settings menu, tap "Payment Methods," the second item down.

5. At the bottom of the Payment Methods menu, tap "Add bank or card…"

6. In the menu that pops up, tap "Card," the second option.

7. Type your prepaid card's information into the corresponding fields, or tap the camera button next to the blank "Card Number" field to simply take a picture of the card and have the app auto-populate the information.

Under zip code, simply enter your own — as the card isn't officially registered to any address, it shouldn't be an issue.

8. Tap "Add" to add the card to your account.

Related coverage from How To Do Everything: Tech:

• There's a limit on your Venmo transactions — here's how much money you can send and receive with each account type

• How to unfreeze your Venmo account, or contact Venmo for support if you don't know why it's been frozen

• You can't delete your Venmo history, but you can make all past and future transactions private — here's how to do it

• How to verify your identity on Venmo, in order to send and receive money in the app

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