Papa John’s Adds Venmo's Mix of Social and Mobile to Bill Splitting

Papa John's  is integrating its mobile and online checkout process with Venmo, a  PayPal-owned system that fuses mobile and social networking to enable person to person payments.

Customers purchase food from Papa John’s can now choose to let the food chain access their Venmo accounts, allowing them to request payments from friends. Splitting pizza bills is a common person-to-person use case, Venmo said in an April 9 release.

Venmo's users send money with written messages, emoticons or other images included with the transaction.  The company has become popular with younger consumers, who often use the name "Venmo" as a verb.  PayPal acquired Venmo as part of its Braintree acquisition in the fall of 2013.

Papa John's, which gets about 50% of its payments through mobile or online channels, has also partnered with Sionic Mobile to link mobile payments to charitable giving.