Going back in time a bit, when PayPal got a reputation for freezing people’s checking accounts, it was always recommended to have a separate checking account with a small balance, to use just for PayPal.

Does Venmo have any such reputation in the market place, where your funds could get frozen for some odd reason?

Asking for a friend who wants to get started.

Venmo is PayPal and as such, it would be a cold day in hell before I supported that crap.
A lot more dirty deeds they do than just hold money for awhile. Do a search on YouTube, there are a lot of great stories over the last few years. It will keep you busy for hours (those darn rabbit holes....)

I would go with Cash App. It is backed by Square.
I believe Square has had some rough patches in the past as well, but nothing like some of these others have.

Yeah, PayPal froze my account with no reason given.  Every attempt to rectify was met with crickets.  1 complaint to the attorney generals office and what to you know, they immediately found the error was on their end and unfroze the account right away.  Shady MFers

Bitcoin fixes this. You hold the cryptographic keys and no other trusted 3rd party is involved. Nobody can confiscate or stop you from broadcasting transactions across the most secure global network humanity has ever conceived.

You could also use custodial wallets like Strike or CashApp but you are just back to square one.

Bluewallet with a Seedsigner is a great choice.

https://bluewallet.io/
https://seedsigner.com/

Additionally, Bitcoin is FOSS and interoperable. Whereas Venmo network is not interoperable with the PayPal Network which isnt interoperable with the CashApp network. With Bitcoin you can interoperate with CashApp, Strike, Code your own wallet, or whatever you want.

Square/CashApp is heading towards Bitcoin/Lighting network under the hood to move money for near 0 fees. Strike has signed NCR and others to use their payment API within their existing system to negate the Visa and Mastercard networks and their 3-5% fees.

If you think the political situation is going to improve anytime soon and finding yourself offsides with the leanings of your Bank isnt likely then stick with Venmo and PayPal and Chase and Goldman Sachs.