US national debt currently exceeds $36 trillion, but if you want to toss a few extra dollars of your own money to try and help bring that down, you can now do so from a Venmo account, as spotted by NPR’s Jack Corbett.
Want to pay down the national debt? The US government will take Venmo
The US national debt currently exceeds $36 trillion, but you can help chip away at that with a Venmo payment.
The US national debt currently exceeds $36 trillion, but you can help chip away at that with a Venmo payment.
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
You can see the Venmo payment option on the Treasury Department’s “Gifts to Reduce the Public Debt” website. There are also options to pay from a bank account, a PayPal account, or with a debit or credit card.
Image: US Department of the Treasury
Based on Wayback Machine archives, it appears that Venmo was added as a payment method sometime after February 22nd. (At that time, an Amazon account was a payment option, which isn’t currently available on the site.)
Donors have contributed more than $67 million to this program since September 1998, per Treasury Department data. But when the debt grows at “just under $55,000 a second,” according to Axios, it might take more than Venmo donations to make a significant dent. And after the passage of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, the debt is likely going to get even higher.
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