One in three U.S. small businesses already use Zelle in some capacity. Yet despite that level of adoption, few business owners view it as a true alternative to Square, PayPal, and other modern payments platforms.
That gap represents an opportunity for banks and credit unions. Rather than treating Zelle as simply another way to send money, financial institutions can position it as a business payments solution embedded directly within the banking relationships their customers already rely on.
How can banks capitalize on that opportunity? In a new report, Zelle for Business and the Race to Own Real-Time Payments, Javelin Strategy & Research Senior Digital Banking Analyst Ian Benton outlines how banks, credit unions, and digital banking providers can expand Zelle’s role in the business environment.
Moving Beyond P2P
From the start, Square and PayPal positioned themselves as business-focused solutions. Their platforms were built around helping merchants accept payments from customers. Over time, they expanded into B2B payments, business checking accounts, and business credit products.
Meanwhile, Zelle launched as a peer-to-peer (P2P) payments platform, making it easier for individuals to send money to one another. While it has been highly successful in that role, extending those capabilities into a business environment presents a different set of challenges.
“Real-time payments can be really valuable to businesses, but banks need to let them know what types of business payments they can do with that, allowing them to think beyond what they already know it as, which is a P2P tool,” said Benton.
That makes it incumbent upon Early Warning Services (EWS), the consortium of banks that owns Zelle, to encourage broader business adoption. The first priority is enhancing the Zelle for Business experience with features designed specifically for business users.
“Oftentimes banks will offer higher transaction values, which is good for a business,” Benton said. “Or they’ll do Zelle tags, where a business doesn’t have to give over the business owner’s email address or a phone number; they just give a tag or QR code payments. We talk about building it into invoicing tools within digital banking or enhancing the payment request with richer memo fields, due dates, reminders, and attachments—things that people would expect within a B2B payments environment.”
A second opportunity is to build complementary capabilities around the product. One example would be deeper integration between Zelle and the broader digital banking experience.
Communicating the Value
Finally, EWS could do more to communicate the value of Zelle for Business. PNC Bank, for example, does an effective job explaining the types of business payments Zelle is best suited for, including videos that demonstrate a variety of business use cases.
“The communication challenge is saying: ‘Hey, we’ve got all these great features that you maybe don’t even know about as a business. We can settle payments real time, anytime on weekends, nights,’” Benton said. “Getting that message across to a business is going to be key.”
Zelle for Business already offers features that appeal to small businesses. For instance, a vendor selling at a farmer’s market benefits from receiving payments almost instantly. Some banks also offer home screen widgets within their mobile apps or QR codes that customers can scan to complete a payment quickly.
Another feature gaining traction is Zelle Ready contacts.
“If I’m a business owner, I go over and fix your garage door,” said Benton. “If I want to request a payment from you, I can just look you up through Zelle Ready contacts, and it’ll tell me if you’re enrolled in Zelle and I can make a request that way.”
Concerns Over Fraud
One reason EWS has not promoted Zelle for Business more aggressively may be concerns about fraud. As seen on the consumer side, fraudsters frequently trick people into sending Zelle payments. Since transaction limits increase for business accounts, the potential impact of those scams also grows. As a result, Zelle continues to emphasize the importance of sending payments only to trusted recipients.
“Let’s say you have a regular supplier that you want to pay, or a contractor that you deal with all the time,” Benton said. “On the incoming side, if you babysit for somebody regularly or do yardwork for them. That’s the quintessential use cases where both parties are really familiar with each other.
“Expanding beyond that is going to be the next challenge without getting a whole bunch of fraudulent payments coming in,” he said. “If you’re out at a farmer’s market, you implicitly know the person face to face, but you don’t know them personally. Or when you’re paying a new supplier for the first time, they’re going to have to make sure that people are not getting defrauded.”
Creating a more secure payments landscape will require both proactive customer education and intentional friction for higher-risk transactions. Together, those measures can help build confidence in using Zelle for larger-value business payments.
Individual banks also determine the payment limits they are comfortable supporting. While some institutions offer higher daily, weekly, and monthly limits for business customers, those thresholds generally remain well below those available through PayPal or Square.
Overcoming Inertia
A finale hurdle is the inertia surrounding business payments. Many businesses still send invoices by mail or email and receive payment by check or ACH. The challenge for Zelle is not only convincing businesses that it is an effective payments solution, but also demonstrating how easily it can fit into existing invoicing and payment workflows.
To that end, more banks are introducing invoicing tools directly within their digital banking platforms rather than requiring businesses to create invoices separately—or worse, generate invoices through Square or PayPal and receive payment there instead. The ability to create and send an invoice from within a banking app, complete with Zelle as a built-in payment option, could significantly accelerate adoption of Zelle for business payments.
“It’s hard to break into how people are currently making payments because that’s probably a relationship they’ve had for a long time with a customer, and they’ve always been paid that way,” said Benton. “Getting Zelle into that process can be a little more difficult.”
