Early Warning’s Person to Person (P2P) payment solution branded Zelle, is making significant headway in attracting new financial institution customers. The more financial institutions, the more consumers are added to the user database and the more easily those consumers can transfer funds among each other. As reported in Bloomberg:
Nineteen U.S. financial firms — including titans such as JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. as well as regional lenders and credit unions — have signed up for a new real-time payments network dubbed Zelle.
In addition to the new clients, Zelle has some new features it is rolling out:
The system lets consumers send money to one another using an e-mail address or mobile phone number registered with their financial institution. Users will be able to arrange real-time transfers online or, beginning next year, through Zelle’s consumer mobile app.
Banks and credit unions are partnering around Zelle in part to fend off advancements made by PayPal and PayPal’s Venmo app for these P2P transactions. Financial institutions still handle the vast majority of P2P transactions, but the impact of Venmo and other third party providers is very real and their market gains are substantial.
Venmo is currently synonymous with P2P digital payments. To unseat Venmo from its pedestal and slow the rate of bank customers using the non-bank money transfer capabilities will take all Zelle participants to uniformly promote the brand.
In a related announcement, Co-Op Financial Services also announced its partnership with Early Warning which will bring Zelle to its network of credit union customers. That news release can be found here .
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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