Scam Alert!
Business Owners Should Beware of Fake Venmo Money
Every business owner knows the importance of protecting their income. You work hard to generate an income, and you should feel comfortable knowing that your funds are secured. Well, if you are currently using Venmo to accept payments for your small business, you could be in danger of losing money due to a popular Venmo scam going around right now.
According to the Better Business Bureau, there is a new Venmo scam where fraudsters are “accidentally” sending money to accounts and then requesting that you please send those funds back to them.
It may seem innocent at first, I mean how can you lose out when you are just sending money back to the person who sent it to you in the first place? Unfortunately, these scammers know what they are doing. The money they are sending to your Venmo account is coming from stolen credit cards. If you send this “accidental” money back, the scammer will replace the stolen card with their own so that money can be withdrawn into their own personal bank account. Eventually, this money will then be removed once again from YOUR Venmo account in order to pay back the original card holder.
With this new scheme scammers are using unsuspecting business Venmo accounts to launder stolen credit money and leave honest business owners with the bill. Because of how this scam is conducted, neither credit card companies nor Venmo will protect you or reimburse you.
How to Protect Yourself from Digital Wallet Scams Like This One
While this scam is focusing specifically on Venmo, this type of scam is possible with all digital wallets such as PayPal, Zelle, Cash App, and even Apple Pay. While we know that these digital wallets have their place, like sharing dinner with friends or sending birthday money to your niece who lives across the country, running a business is not one of those places.
Many business owners accept payment through Venmo and other digital wallets, and by doing so, are putting their money at an unnecessary risk. These apps have no real protection for you as a business owner. If you are hit by one of these scams, they will not have proper fraud protection and resolutions for you. You’ll simply be out of money while they say “ oh well sorry about your luck”.
If you do accept money through a digital wallet like Venmo, you can protect yourself from this scam by never sending money “back” to an account that has “accidentally” sent you money. That’s how the scam works. Unfortunately, as a business owner, you will be targeted for this scam precisely because it’s harder for you not to comply with this scam. Scammers will threaten negative reviews that complain about “stealing money” that could hurt your business on a popular review site like Google or Yelp. Scammers increase their chances of making their scam work by threatening your integrity as a business owner if you don’t comply right away.
When you are a business owner, it is important that you have every level of protection against fraud, because this is your livelihood at stake! The only way to truly protect your business is to get out of using digital wallets like Venmo for your business altogether.
The Best Way to Accept Payments for Your Small Business
In order to protect yourself from scams like this one, it is important to have a payment processor for your small business that is actually meant for businesses. This will ensure that you have things in place such as fraud protection in case something were to happen to your account.
Here at PocketSuite, we help small businesses succeed by streamlining and automating their booking process, have risk free payment processing with built in fraud protection, and so much more. Basically, when you take Credit Cards, no one can easily send you fraudulent payments and you have protections from the Credit Card companies.
With our payment processing, you won’t have to worry about accepting payments through digital wallets like Venmo and Cash app ever again. You will get instant payouts deposited into your account, a fast checkout process for your clients, and of course, built in fraud protection.
Our team works hard to make sure our pros are protected. We look into fraudulent transactions and chargebacks and there is always a real human available to discuss any and all issues directly with our pros.
So if you want to take your small service based business to the next level and make sure your funds are always protected, then give PocketSuite a try with our risk free 30 day free trial ( you don’t even need to enter a credit card to get all the benefits). We would love to help you grow your business!
