Zelle
Zelle is an American digital payments network run by a private financial services company owned by Bank of America, Truist, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo. The Zelle service enables individuals to electronically transfer money from their bank account to another registered user's bank account using a mobile device or the website of a participating banking institution. Transfers between bank accounts of registered users are typically completed within minutes. There is currently no fee or charge on the transaction to users. Instead, participating banking institutions are charged a fee per transaction.
The Zelle service was launched in June 2017, as the successor to the clearXchange payment service. Zelle has expanded, and as of 2022 eighty percent of the US population could connect to Zelle through their banking app, with over 1,600 financial institutions participating. Zelle has been criticized for being a platform that has facilitated online financial fraud in the United States. In 2022, at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, it was censured for not giving refunds to people who were tricked by criminals using Zelle.
In April 2025, Zelle shut down their standalone app, requiring all users to interact with Zelle through their bank's app.
History
Zelle originated as clearXchange, a payments service launched in April 2011 by Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. The platform enabled person-to-person, business-to-consumer, and government-to-consumer payments.By 2015, clearXchange had expanded to include US Bank and Capital One as owner-members. That same year, it announced the availability of a real-time payments system. In 2016, clearXchange was acquired by Early Warning Services, a financial technology company. At the time of the acquisition, Early Warning was owned by Bank of America, US Bank, Chase, Capital One, Wells Fargo, PNC Bank, and BB&T, which would later become Truist. The following year, Early Warning introduced Zelle and announced the phaseout of clearXchange's person-to-person service.
In March 2019, Early Warning Services CEO Paul Finch stepped down to work for his family's charitable foundation. In May 2019, Early Warning Services appointed a new CEO, Albert Ko, who was formerly the chief transformation officer for Intuit.
By the end of 2022, Zelle was offered by approximately 1,800 financial institutions and reached about 80% of Americans with bank accounts, processing $1.6 billion in daily transactions. In August 2023, Early Warning appointed Cameron Fowler as chief executive officer, succeeding Albert Ko. In September 2024, Denise Leonhard, formerly of Venmo, PayPay, and American Express, became general manager of Zelle.
During 2024, Zelle processed over $1 trillion in transactions, with approximately $283 billion being sent or received by small businesses. By the end of that year, Zelle was connecting 151 million consumer and small business bank accounts. In April 2025, Zelle discontinued its standalone mobile app, requiring customers to access the service through participating banks' applications. As of July 2025, Zelle was offered by 2,300 financial institutions, with 95 percent of those institutions being either community banks or credit unions.
Service
The Zelle service is intended for payments to those whom the payer already knows and trusts and the service disclaims any responsibility for goods and services sold through the system. Zelle uses ACH to settle the payments overnight, similar to direct deposit.Zelle users can send money to other registered Zelle users. Alternatively, money can be sent to unregistered users using only their checking and routing information with no need to register by the recipient. Users access the network within the websites and apps of Zelle-participating U.S. financial institutions.
The network connects with existing bank accounts, so consumers do not need to fund a separate account to use the service. Only the recipient's email address or mobile number is needed for a user to send money directly from their bank account to the recipient's bank account. An email address or mobile phone number may be actively enrolled in Zelle to receive payments at only one financial institution. To register at multiple banks, users need to provide different email addresses or mobile phone numbers for each.
A Zelle user can transfer money to a recipient or submit a request for others to send a payment or to split the cost of a payment.
There are limits on the dollar amount and frequency of transactions allowed on Zelle imposed by the banking institution associated with the account being used. For example, as of 2020 transfers from most Wells Fargo funding accounts are limited to $2,500 per day and $20,000 in a 30-day period, and lower limits may apply for new payees or when using the Zelle mobile app rather than the bank's self-operated services. Transfers from a Chase checking account are limited to $2,000 per day and $16,000 per calendar month, as of 2017. Payments made using Zelle cannot be canceled.
The Zelle website launched in June 2017 says that "Transactions between enrolled Zelle users typically occur in minutes. If your recipient is not yet enrolled with Zelle, it may take between 1 and 3 business days after they enroll."
Competition with Venmo
The Zelle service's principal competitor is PayPal and its Venmo payment service. Venmo is more popular, based on public awareness, opinion polling, and active engagement with users, but Zelle processes a much larger dollar volume of money transfers, transferring transactions of more than $1.6 billion a day in the first half of 2022.The two services are similar from the user's perspective; e.g., both services use email addresses and mobile phone numbers to identify recipients, but Venmo lacks the direct integration with banking institutions that Zelle has and Zelle money transfers are typically processed more quickly.
Starting in January 2018, Venmo began to offer a more rapid transfer option than its typical one- to three-day transfer service. Venmo charges a fee for the service, whereas Zelle-affiliated banks do not. The Zelle network does not charge users a fee for money transfers. Banks are allowed to charge a fee for Zelle transfers involving their accounts, but they generally do not.
Both Venmo and Zelle payments to a registered user cannot be canceled.
Partners
The Zelle Network has more than 1600 financial institutions, including the network partners Mastercard, Visa and processor partners such as FIS, Fiserv, and Jack Henry & Associates.Criticism
The Zelle service has received negative publicity due to fraud incidents where bank customers’ accounts were compromised through social engineering tactics. In these cases, fraudsters set up Zelle accounts in the victims’ names and used them to transfer funds out of the victims’ accounts, often leaving the victims with limited practical or legal options for recovery. In one case, a Florida man pled guilty to defrauding victims of $250,000 by convincing them to make payments using Zelle to reverse purported fraudulent transactions. In some cases, bank customers have been compensated by the banks involved, depending upon the bank and its policies and the specifics of the incident. Banks may use secondary confirmation methods such as SMS or otherwise place limits on newly created accounts and transfers to recently added recipients as a preventive measure. Shortly before releasing a critical report, Senator Elizabeth Warren criticized Zelle executives at a September 2022, Senate Banking Committee hearing, both for lack of refunds in cases of fraud, and lack of response to requests for statistics.Regulatory action and fraud concerns
In December 2024, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a lawsuit against Early Warning Services, the operator of Zelle, along with three major banks: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. The lawsuit alleges that these entities failed to protect consumers from widespread fraud on the Zelle network.Key allegations in the lawsuit included:
- Customers of the three banks named lost more than $870 million over Zelle's seven-year existence due to fraud.
- The banks and EWS rushed Zelle to market without implementing effective consumer safeguards to compete with apps like Venmo and CashApp.
- Hundreds of thousands of consumers filed fraud complaints but were largely denied assistance.
- The banks failed to properly investigate complaints or provide consumers with legally required reimbursement for fraud and errors.
The CFPB dropped the lawsuit in March of 2025.