SAN FRANCISCO—In what’s either the most brilliant or most horrifying tech update of 2025, payment app Venmo rolled out a new “Breakup Mode” feature Tuesday that dredges up and demands payment for literally every single thing you ever paid for during your now-dead relationship.
“We kept seeing this pattern of users sending these sad, desperate requests at 2 a.m. for their ex to finally pay them back for that concert from like eight months ago,” said Venmo product manager Alicia Chen during a press conference that several attendees later described as “weirdly therapeutic” and “like watching someone’s therapy session in real time.” “Breakup Mode just cuts through all the passive-aggressive bullshit by generating an itemized list of everything from that $4 coffee you bought them on your second date to the $900 emergency vet bill you covered because they were ‘just a little short this month, babe, I promise I’ll get you back.’”
The feature, which activates when you change your relationship status and select a breakup reason from options like “mutual decision” to the more specific “caught them cheating with my roommate who I LITERALLY INTRODUCED THEM TO,” immediately freezes all shared expenses and launches what the company calls a “comprehensive financial autopsy” of your relationship.
“Look, Breakup Mode doesn’t just look at the obvious stuff,” explained Chen, who kept checking her phone throughout the presentation and muttering “unbelievable” at incoming notifications. “Our algorithm also factors in emotional labor, you know? Like, we can calculate the exact monetary value of sitting through their god-awful amateur poetry readings or pretending their mom’s dry-ass turkey wasn’t an actual crime against humanity.”
According to sources who’ve seen the feature in action, it includes several customization options that users can toggle depending on how badly the relationship ended. These include “Petty Mode,” which tacks on 18% interest to all unpaid expenses, and the nuclear option “Scorched Earth,” which automatically tags mutual friends in all payment requests so everyone knows exactly who the cheapskate was in the relationship.
Miguel Rodriguez, who beta tested the feature after his girlfriend dumped him via text while he was at her cousin’s wedding, couldn’t stop raving about its thoroughness. “I had absolutely no idea I’d dropped $347 on Taco Bell runs for my ex over the past year,” said Rodriguez, scrolling through his phone with a mixture of awe and horror. “The app even calculated that she owes me $42.87 for the fancy shampoo she used whenever she showered at my place. Like, that stuff was expensive! I was using V05 while she’s helping herself to my Olaplex!”
The app also introduces what it calls a “Relationship Equity” calculator that determines who invested more financially in the partnership. Users get this depressing breakdown showing categories like “Gifts That Weren’t Reciprocated,” “Streaming Services They Still Use,” and the particularly brutal “Money Spent Trying to Impress Their Friends Who Never Liked You Anyway.”
Dr. Sarah Williams, a relationship therapist who’s written several books on healthy breakups, expressed some concerns about the feature’s potential impact on actual human emotions. “While financial transparency is important, reducing a relationship to a balance sheet might not be the healthiest approach to closure,” she said, before immediately admitting she had already used the feature to request $1,200 from her ex-husband for “emotional damages incurred during that nightmare trip to his parents’ lake house where his mom kept asking when we were having kids EVEN THOUGH SHE KNEW WE WERE SEPARATING.”
Venmo developers, apparently not satisfied with just destroying post-breakup peace, have also included a “Reconciliation Option” for couples who inevitably get back together, which automatically calculates a “Relationship Restart Fee” based on the number of angry texts exchanged, social media posts deleted, and friends who now permanently hate your partner.
At press time, sources confirmed Venmo was already developing a companion feature called “Prenup Mode,” which would force new couples to sign a digital agreement outlining who pays for what before they’re even allowed to split their first dinner bill.
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