Venmo API Research

Dan Salmon

Spring 2019

What is Venmo?

2018 total payment volume: $19 billion

" Venmo is the simple, fun money app for sending cash quickly between friends and shopping at your favorite online stores. Share your new buys, split purchases with Venmo friends to avoid awkward IOUs, and catch up on what your friends are doing on the feed. "

Quote source: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/venmo/id351727428?mt=8

Venmo

To enable social interaction, all transactions are public by default

"90%-plus of all Venmo transactions are open to somebody's friend, network, and 90%-plus have a some sort of emoji or written commentary on that transaction. So if I want to see what you're doing, who you're dating, what you did, I can just go into your Venmo feed and see it. And there is like -- and everybody shares. So it is not a payment transaction but an experience for people...."

- PayPal CEO Dan Schulman

Quote source: https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/22/why-venmo-is-so-popular-with-millennials.aspx

{
    "payment_id": 1896938162,
    "permalink": "/story/5cc1e9e47addfb4bc7044621",
    "via": "",
    "action_links": {},
    "story_id": "5cc1e9e47addfb4bc7044621",
    "comments": [],
    "updated_time": "2019-04-25T17:09:56Z",
    "audience": "public",
    "actor": {
        "username": "Diana-Carter-8",
        "picture": "https://venmopics.appspot.com/u/v1/m/ce5ae400-d291-4cc4-a13d-d0ee0461cc9c",
        "is_business": false,
        "name": "Diana Carter",
        "firstname": "Diana",
        "lastname": "Carter",
        "cancelled": false,
        "date_created": "2017-08-25T15:06:48",
        "external_id": "2289298166513664827",
        "id": "25132475"
    },
    "transactions": [],
    "created_time": "2019-04-25T17:09:56Z",
    "mentions": [],
    "message": "Let’s ride!",
    "type": "payment",
    "likes": {
        "count": 0,
        "data": []
    }
},
...

Public API Data

GET https://api.venmo.com/v1/stories

- yields last 20 public transactions

Rate-Limit: 1 request per 30 seconds per IP

57,600 transactions / day / IP

Public API

Data Warehousing

API

JSON files

jq

JSON Processor

Analysis

168,895 Total transactions

163,407 Total distinct users

Emoji frequency in transaction notes

Transactions by App

Transactions by day of week

What information could we find about a target from this?

{
  "_id": "5c658beb7aa4193525486710",
  "date_updated": "2019-02-03T20:24:33Z",
  "transfer": null,
  "app": {
    "description": "Venmo for iPhone",
    "site_url": "null",
    "id": 1,
    "name": "Venmo for iPhone"
  },
  ...

Mobile Platform

{
  "_id": "5c5078a7c626d5f137d2c997",
  "date_updated": "2019-01-05T18:32:12Z",
  "transfer": null,
  "app": {
    "description": "Venmo for Android",
    "site_url": null,
    "id": 4,
    "name": "Venmo for Android"
  },
  ...

Associates

Can be secondary targets to get to primary

[
  {
    "_id": "5bb7c1761bed297da90c3b0f",
    "payment": {
      "target": {
        "username": "eturton"
      },
      "actor": {
        "username": "Laurie-Crane-Turton"
      }
    }
  },
  {
    "_id": "5bbe2bd84f3b13b02948fd9a",
    "payment": {
      "target": {
        "username": "Julia-Karg"
      },
      "actor": {
        "username": "eturton"
      }
    }
  },
  {
    "_id": "5c507b44c626d5f137d79ae1",
    "payment": {
      "target": {
        "username": "eturton"
      },
      "actor": {
        "username": "Lindsey-Gallagher-3"
      }
    }
  }
]

Query: "Show me all transactions involving user 'eturton'"

{
    "note": "Northern lights indica",
    "type": "payment",
    "audience": "public",
    "action": "pay",
    "date_created": "2018-08-22T03:55:24",
    ...
}

Illicit Sales

{
  "note": "Dabs, hash, Afghan kush. Thanks!",
  "type": "payment",
  "audience": "public",
  "action": "pay",
  "date_updated": "2018-08-04T04:25:04Z",
  ...
}

{
    "note": "Mariruth cbd oil",
    "type": "payment",
    "audience": "public",
    "action": "pay",
    "date_created": "2019-01-05T18:58:18Z",
    ...
}

Spending patterns for spearphishing

[
    { "payment" : { "id" : "2538576616297071552" }, "note" : "our very bad dominos idea" },
    { "payment" : { "id" : "2554896746987652093" }, "note" : "Late night dominos 🐷" },
    { "payment" : { "id" : "2587204036641948570" }, "note" : "The dominos motion passes" },
    { "payment" : { "id" : "2589292491517723213" }, "note" : "For the dominos emails I’ll get the rest of my life" },
    { "payment" : { "id" : "2588294076407218659" }, "note" : "Get u some dominos 🍕🍕🍕" },
]