The feature that sets Venmo apart is the social feed, which brings transparency to a class of transactions that used to be entirely private. The feed—an emoji-laden stream of often-indecipherable payment descriptions and inside jokes—seems frivolous; it is not a social-media destination in the way that Facebook or Twitter is. But as a public record, it is quite revealing of social dynamics—who’s hanging out with whom, and perhaps where. A friend of mine told me that Venmo proved invaluable in trying to determine if her ex and his new girlfriend were still dating.

In other words, pointless and goofy as it seems, people do pay attention to what they see in Venmo’s feed. And there’s actually a way this parade of public transactions might give the app a significant advantage over its many competitors.

The reason, says Richard Crone, who runs a payments-focused firm called Crone Consulting, has to do with how Venmo makes money—or, more precisely, how it will make money. Currently, Venmo doesn’t directly generate all that much revenue for the company that owns it, PayPal. (Contrary to what some of its users may have guessed, the app doesn’t make money “on the float”—that is, by investing whatever funds users keep as a positive balance in their Venmo accounts.)

Things could look different not too long from now. Venmo’s plan, which it has already initiated and will expand in the coming year, is to facilitate more transactions between businesses and their customers. Last summer, Venmo introduced partnerships with about a dozen apps (including the food-delivery service Munchery and the fast-food chain White Castle) that now let users pay straight from their Venmo accounts. The idea, Crone explains, is that Venmo would take a cut—its standard rate is 2.9 percent plus a small flat fee, which is at the higher end of what merchants pay for a typical credit-card transaction—of not just in-app purchases like these, but of in-person transactions at physical checkout counters, where customers spend trillions of dollars a year.

This is where the social feed comes in. “You walk into any retailer, any restaurant, any service provider—what do they want you to do? Like them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter,” Crone says. Working with retailers would give Venmo a business model similar to credit-card issuers and processors—“but with much more upside,” he says, “because the retailers spend far more trying to get you to like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter and all these other things that they could just get as a byproduct of the payment.” That is, if someone paid for a taco using Venmo, their friends might see where they ate lunch.

One limit on this strategy’s effectiveness is that consumers might not be eager to publicize every one of their purchases. But Venmo is aware of this: In the year or so since it started trying its service out with a few businesses, the default setting has been for payments not to be shared in the social feed. Still, Bill Ready, PayPal’s chief operating officer, recently told Barron’s that when the initiative is expanded, “social aspects will be not only present, but also be what’s most attractive to our users.” And Fast Company has reported that a job-application prompt for prospective Venmo employees last year mentioned research finding that “Venmo users are more open to purchasing at new businesses … that they learn about from friends on Venmo.”