There’s one golden rule of Venmo, and it’s super easy to follow

Skye Gould/Tech Insider

GIF by Skye Gould/Tech Insider

You meet a friend at a bar for an IPA.

The place has a credit card minimum, so you offer to pay for it. After you finish your beers, you walk out of the bar; but before you catch your train, you send a Venmo request for the beer.

Your friend shoots you a look — one that says “Really? You’re going to haggle me over $7?” 

And now you feel like a petty jerk.

Since Venmo lets you instantly request money from your phone contacts, it’s common for people to send digital IOUs, no matter how small. But asking for the money immediately can feel uncomfortable.

Etiquette expert Daniel Post Senning is here to help us out. The golden rule of Venmo is to give your friends an opportunity to pay you back, he tells Tech Insider. 

You shouldn’t feel bad about requesting money, no matter if it's for $1 or $100, he says. As for the turnaround, it differs depending on the dollar amount.

If you pay for an IPA at the bar (and there's an unspoken agreement that you're not gifting the beer to your friend), wait a few hours before sending a Venmo request, Post Senning says. But if you offer to cover, say, your friend’s $1,000 rent one month, you should wait a few weeks for them to get paid. It’s important to consider what’s reasonable for them.

On the flip side, if you borrowed money, you should pay that person back before they ask you to, he adds.

Sure, it’d be nice if everyone automatically offered to get the next round. But if they don’t, Post Senning says it’s not Venmo’s fault. Your friends were probably fickle with paying people back way before the app’s launch.