Venmo finally gets more secure with two-factor authentication
If you're the type who uses Venmo to pay your buddies back for artisanal cupcakes, congratulations: You're a little bit safer now. Venmo announced the other day that it was rolling out a new two-factor identification feature -- when the service detects a login from a new device, it'll send you an email and a 6-digit pin to your phone so you can prove everything's on the up and up. That might sound like a no-brainer for a financial services company that's (thanks to back-to-back acquisitions) part of eBay's payments empire, and you know what? It absolutely is. The only thing more shocking than Venmo not having something like this in the first place is how long its taken to implement.
You see, Venmo might be the coolest mobile payments app out there, but it sure isn't perfect. Questionable practices like asking new users for their banking details and not warning them if/when their login details are changed have led to (rightfully) heightened scrutiny lately. The company's been amping up its security chops as far back as last July when California's Department of Business Oversight called for more stringent, exacting security processes, but the New York Times points out that Venmo's headcount is hovering at around 70 people. Not exactly the hardened horde you'd expect for an outfit that handles over a billion dollars a year in transactions, is it?
