From Angel Reese to little-known locals, you can now pay your favorite college stars directly with the 'Venmo of student athletes'

• A new Venmo-like app called MyNILPay enables fans to send direct payments to college athletes.
• CEO Brent Chapman told Insider his app is NCAA compliant thanks to the "quid pro quo" fans receive.
• Basketball legend Nancy Lieberman said the app helps foster "a level playing field with male athletes."

College athletes have been getting paid thanks to the changing landscape of Name, Image, and Likeness and the brand sponsorships that have followed.

Now, a new Venmo-like app is enabling fans to get in the NIL action.

MyNILpay allows college sports enthusiasts to send direct payments to their favorite NCAA athletes — from stars of March Madness like Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark to the little-known distance runner at a Division-III school.

"It is like Venmo for student athletes," myNILpay CEO Brent Chapman told Insider. "People say to me, 'Why don't they just use Venmo?' Because they can't. Because it's illegal to send them money."

NCAA rules require collegiate athletes to offer a product or service in exchange for receiving money of any kind. In the case of myNILpay, fans receive "a piece of digital art with the athlete's name and digital signature" after submitting a payment.

"That's the quid pro quo," Chapman said. "It's no different than a signed basketball or football or volleyball, right?"

All NCAA athletes with an email address ending in ".edu" are automatically eligible to receive payments through myNILpay. While it's an obvious money-maker for the big-name quarterback who completes a stunning touchdown pass or the star guard who hits a buzzer-beater, Chapman said he it may be even more impactful for the student athletes most often overlooked by big brands and schools' NIL collectives — which pool funds to distribute NIL opportunities within a given athletic department.

"This was built not for Bryce Young and Archie Manning," Chapman said. "This was built for D-II, D-III, lower D-I, the swimming team, the soccer team, the Olympic sports."

Chapman said that fans of his alma mater's soccer team, for example, have previously had no way to legally contribute to that team specifically. If they were to donate to the athletic department, that money may very well be allocated to the revenue sports.

But with myNILpay, fans can pay the whole team, the star midfielder, or the third-string goalkeeper. Those same athletes can go to their hometowns to raise money on their own behalf.

While they admittedly won't make the millions of dollars afforded to the top money-makers of NIL, those aforementioned athletes could make enough money to substantially change their college experience.

MyNILpay would've made a massive difference for even the biggest college sports stars in years past. Basketball legend Nancy Lieberman — who enjoyed such a prolific collegiate career that the annual award given to the nation's top point guard is named in her honor — told Insider that she was barely scraping by financially back when she was a multi-time national champion and All-American at Old Dominion.

"When I got there, I was poor," Lieberman, who is on the myNILpay board, said. "And when I left there, I was poor."

"I was representing the United States of America," she added. "I was representing the Olympic team. I was on two Olympic teams. I mean, I didn't have money to buy a pair of shoes or to have nice clothes."

Lieberman said she believes this product could be particularly impactful for the women of collegiate sports, who will have a chance to level the playing field with their male counterparts by nature of their money going directly into their bank accounts rather than through a third party.

"You have to pass it down," Lieberman said. "At this stage in my life, my job is to use my platform to help open doors for other people."