In May 2021, Buzzfeed News reported that it had found the personal Venmo account of U.S. President Joe Biden after “less than 10 minutes of looking for it.”
The story came after the New York Times reported on May 14 that the president had sent money to his grandchildren through the peer-to-peer payments application. At the time of this writing, the accounts tied to the president and first lady Jill Biden were no longer available online, and our own individual search did not return any results.
Venmo is a social digital wallet owned by Paypal that allows users to pay send and receive money to their friends. Though there are various privacy settings that users can apply, each transaction is recorded in a social media-style feed that people can update to describe their transactions.
“The safety and privacy of all Venmo users and their information is always a top priority, and we take this responsibility very seriously. Customers always have the ability to make their transactions private and determine their own privacy settings in the app,” a Venmo spokesperson told Buzzfeed. “We’re consistently evolving and strengthening the privacy measures for all Venmo users to continue to provide a safe, secure place to send and spend money.”
A spokesperson for Venmo told Snopes that they do not disclose on individual accounts. Snopes also contacted the White House to determine why the president’s account was no longer available, but did not receive a response at the time of this writing. We will update the article accordingly.