Meet Zelle, a New Bank-Backed Digital P2P Product that’s the Newest Addition to the Growing Mobile Payment Market
6-12-2017
More than 30 of the largest banks and credit unions in the United States launched a new digital peer-to-peer payment product today called Zelle, an app that will streamline and unify digital P2P payments for 86 million banked Americans.
“Beginning this week, and continuing on a rolling basis over the next 12 months, Zelle will become available in the mobile banking apps of more than 30 participating financial institutions,” a Zelle press release sent today stated, “with no additional app to download, Zelle will make digital payments a fast, safe and easy alternative to checks and cash.”
Zelle will be fully integrated into the interfaces of each financial institution’s mobile banking application. The network will enable real-time fund transfers between customers of different banks and credit unions, taking minutes to complete transfers where prior P2P products took days. Zelle says that a consumer’s email address or phone number are the only pieces of information required to make a same-day transfer of funds. JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Co., U.S. Bancorp and Capital One Financial will be among the first to activate Zelle for their customers, Reuters reports. The launch begins this week and roll out will continue throughout the next 12 months.
A standalone Zelle app is expected to launch later in the year, according to a report from Bloomberg. Partnerships with Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. will allow for debit card holders to use Zelle through the standalone app even if their bank is not participating.
The launch comes after six years of infrastructure development and planning by Early Warning, according to reports from The New York Times and Business Insider. It also comes at a time of increasing competition and investment in digital P2P products. PayPal’s Venmo is popular among millennials, and Apple announced last week its integration of Apple Pay into the Messaging app to allow for Apple customers to send digital cash to each other through the instant message interface.
About ETA
The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) is the world’s leading advocacy and trade association for the payments industry. Our members span the breadth of significant payments and fintech companies, from the largest incumbent players to the emerging disruptors in the U.S. and in more than a dozen countries around the world. ETA members make commerce possible by processing approximately $56.75 trillion annually in purchases and P2P payments worldwide and deploying payments innovation to merchants and consumers.
ETAs membership spans the breadth of the payments industry to include independent sales organizations (ISOs), payments networks, financial institutions, transaction processors, mobile payments products and services, payments technologies, and software providers (ISV) and hardware suppliers. For more information, visit electran.org.