# The Dodo Digest: Don't Make Customers Learn How to Pay > TikTok explores payments in DMs and Venmo moves into tuition. Why founders should offer the payment methods customers already trust, plus v1.112.0 updates. - **Author**: Rishabh Goel - **Published**: 2026-08-24 - **Category**: Newsletter - **URL**: https://dodopayments.com/blogs/newsletter-august24 --- ### TL;DR - TikTok is exploring peer-to-peer payments inside DMs, while Venmo is expanding into tuition payments, showing how payment is becoming part of more everyday experiences. - The lesson for founders is simple: customers already have payment habits they trust, so your product should make it easy for them to use those habits. - More relevant payment methods can reduce checkout friction and payment-related drop-off, especially when selling across different markets. - This week, we continued refining [Dodo Payments v1.112.0](https://docs.dodopayments.com/changelog/v1.112.0#1-discount-codes-amount-discounts-scheduling-%26-eligibility-rules) with more flexible discount codes and several improvements across payments, billing, webhooks, and analytics. Hello everyone, I was reading about TikTok exploring peer-to-peer payments inside DMs this week, and something about it really stood out to me. The idea is still early, and TikTok says the feature isn't currently being tested, but the concept is fascinating: being able to send money to someone without leaving the app where you're already talking to them. The reported experience even lets the recipient simply tap to accept the payment. Then I came across another story about Venmo expanding into tuition payments, which is a completely different use case but follows the same principle: take a payment method people already know and trust, and bring it into another part of their lives. That got me thinking about something founders often overlook. Why are we still making customers adapt to how our product wants them to pay? Concept mockup of peer-to-peer payments inside the TikTok app, showing payment cards and send controls on a mobile screen ## The Signal We're moving toward a world where payments are becoming less of a separate destination and more of a built-in part of the products people already use. TikTok wants payments inside conversations. Venmo is moving into something as significant as tuition. X has also been expanding into payments. The common thread isn't really about any one payment company. It's convenience. But there's an important caveat here: simply adding payments to a product doesn't mean customers will automatically use them. WhatsApp is a good example. It has an enormous user base in India, but its payments offering never became the default way people transact on the platform. Having a payment option available is one thing; getting customers to actually trust it, recognize it, and use it is another. And I think that's the more important lesson for founders. It's not about offering every possible payment method. It's about offering the payment methods your customers already understand and trust. People already have ways they prefer to pay. Some trust cards, some use bank transfers, some rely on wallets, and in many markets there are local payment methods that are far more familiar than an international card. The more relevant ways you let customers pay, the less likely you are to lose someone simply because the checkout doesn't support the method they already use. IndexBox article headline reading "Universities Now Accept Tuition Payments via PayPal and Venmo" ## Why This Matters I think founders should think about payment methods the same way they think about distribution. You don't build one acquisition channel and assume everyone will come through it. So why build one payment method and expect everyone to use it? The goal isn't to have the longest list of payment methods. It's to make sure the right customer can pay in the way that feels most natural to them. If you're selling into India, UPI may matter. If you're selling into Europe, local bank-based methods may matter. If your customers prefer wallets, give them wallets. The easier it is for someone to pay in a way that already feels familiar, the less friction you create at the final step of the buying process. And when that friction disappears, you give yourself a better chance of converting the customer in the first place and avoiding payment-related drop-off later. For founders, I would think about it in three simple ways: 1. **Look at where your customers actually come from.** Don't add payment methods because they're popular globally. Add the ones that matter for the markets you're actually serving. 2. **Remove the final piece of friction.** You've already spent time getting someone to discover your product, sign up, and decide to buy. Don't make payment the point where they have to rethink the purchase. 3. **Keep your infrastructure flexible.** New payment methods will continue to appear. Your payment stack should make it easy to add them without rebuilding your checkout every time. ## What We Shipped That's also a big part of what we're trying to do with Dodo: make it easier for founders to support more ways of getting paid without turning payments into another engineering project. In [Dodo Payments v1.112.0](https://docs.dodopayments.com/changelog/v1.112.0#1-discount-codes-amount-discounts-scheduling-%26-eligibility-rules), one of the larger improvements was our [Discount Codes](https://docs.dodopayments.com/features/discount-codes) system. We've made it much more flexible so founders can move beyond simple percentage-based promotions and have more control over how discounts actually work. You can now create fixed-amount discounts, schedule when a code becomes active, configure different discount behaviour across currencies, and control who is eligible to redeem a code. That can mean a promotion for everyone, a special offer for first-time customers, an offer for existing customers, or even a code restricted to a specific group of users. We also added more controls around usage, including per-customer redemption limits and minimum cart values, so promotions can be designed around the way your business actually operates. Alongside that, we shipped: - **[A rebuilt Webhooks experience](https://docs.dodopayments.com/changelog/v1.112.0#2-a-rebuilt-webhooks-experience)** with delivery logs, replay tools, testing, endpoint monitoring, and email alerts. - **[Cash App Pay](https://docs.dodopayments.com/changelog/v1.112.0#3-cash-app-pay-for-subscriptions)** for subscriptions and **[SEPA Direct Debit](https://docs.dodopayments.com/changelog/v1.112.0#4-sepa-direct-debit)** for one-time EUR payments. - **[Clearer payment failure messages](https://docs.dodopayments.com/changelog/v1.112.0#5-clearer-payment-failure-messages)** so customers and merchants can better understand what went wrong. - **[Analytics refinements](https://docs.dodopayments.com/changelog/v1.112.0#9-analytics-new-widgets-and-refinements)**, including new visualizations, persistent filters, and improved revenue-by-country views. A lot of these improvements aren't things customers will necessarily notice as a "new feature." And that's intentional. The best payment infrastructure should make the experience feel easier without asking founders to think about everything happening underneath it. Dodo Payments discount code editor showing a flat 500 INR amount discount with per-currency options for INR and USD ## One Last Thought The best payment experience is often the one where the customer doesn't have to think about payment at all. They already know how they want to pay. They just want your product to let them. As founders, we spend so much time removing friction from our products. Payments should be no different. Give customers more ways to say yes, instead of giving them another reason to leave. Also, join our loving [Discord community](https://discord.gg/dodo-payments-1305511580854779984)! Best, **Rishabh Goel** **Co-Founder, Dodo Payments** --- - [More Newsletter articles](https://dodopayments.com/blogs/category/newsletter) - [All articles](https://dodopayments.com/blogs)