Venmo gets Touch ID security, tagging, and direct linking to bank accounts

Mobile payments app Venmo is getting a series of security and social updates for its peer-to-peer platform.

The company announced today that users can now sign into Venmo with Apple’s Touch ID feature on iPhone 5S, 6, and 6 Plus. It’s also slightly streamlining the process of linking a bank account to the app. Venmo users with bank accounts at Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citibank can link their bank accounts to Venmo using their online banking user name and password rather than their bank account and routing number.

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The new bank linking process will be more secure for consumers who bank with the aforementioned institutions, because those users will never have to hand over their bank account and routing numbers. Plus, Venmo doesn’t store username and password information on its servers.

In addition to security, Venmo is also upgrading some of its social functions. The company is adding Twitter-like @mentions to its social feed of transaction history.

Venmo has positioned itself as a social money-sharing platform. It’s what differentiates it from some of the peer-to-peer mobile payment services like Square Cash, Google Wallet, and Dwolla. Pushing friend tagging in posts seems like a reminder to users that Venmo is indeed a social network, not just a payment platform. It’s easy to forget when so many other applications offer the opportunity to socialize. And sharing status updates involving money is fairly counterintuitive to the average American: We hate talking about money.