Venmo, the online payment platform, has partnered with the NCAA to protect student-athletes from online harassment.
According to ESPN, some prominent student-athletes have been subject to harassment and unwanted payment requests on the app from strangers who lost bets or want information on the athlete’s playing status. As a result, Venmo and the NCAA created a “hotline” to report abuse and harassment, as well as, increase account security and monitoring.
A majority of the online abuse has been directed at football and basketball players.
"We have heard of solicitation of insider information as well," Clint Hangebrauck, NCAA managing director of enterprise risk management, told ESPN. "'Hey, can you let me know if you're going to play or not, and I'll provide you some money,' which is obviously really problematic for us from an integrity standpoint."
David Szuchman, senior vice president of PayPal, Venmo’s parent company, said, “Harassment or abuse of any kind is not tolerated on the platform, and strict action is taken against users who violate our policies. We're monitoring to make sure that we understand what's coming into these student-athletes' accounts that is unwanted. Who is it coming from, and then, based on our terms and conditions, how do we treat them?"
Related: PayPal Teams Up With Big Ten, Big 12 to Enable Digital Payments to Athletes
Venmo emphasized that any illegal activity on the app will be reported to federal law enforcement. Szuchman, who oversees financial crime at Venmo, said he knows that college student-athletes now require a higher level of protection from the company.
Just last year, the NCAA reported that 12% of all online harassment toward student-athletes was related to sports betting. In a study of online harassment, the NCAA identified more than 740 instances over several social media platforms related to sports betting. Sexual harassment, racist comments and homophobic comments were also prevalent in the study.
The partnership between the NCAA and Venmo is a first for the college sport governing body, but Hangebrauck said he hoped that other social media companies consider similar partnerships, as online harassment of student-athletes is not limited to the payment platform where many students split pizza money, send funds for rent or interact with friends.
"How do we let them operate in a way where they can feel like any other college kid but also have those enhanced measures around them to make sure they have a safe experience on their platforms?" asked Hangebrauck.
