Introduction Of Zelle
Zelle will shut down its stand-alone app on Tuesday, the company announced in a recent blog post. That might sound alarming for the more than 150 million users in the U.S. who rely on It for person-to-person payments, but the fallout is likely to be small.
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It is shutting down because the app isn’t used much. In fact, only about 2% of It transactions go through the stand-alone app: Most users visit It via their banks. That means those who used the independent app must now sign up for the service again via a participating financial institution.
It takes a lot of resources to maintain an independent app, especially one that deals with money. Since only a tiny fraction of transactions were processed through the It app, the decision to discontinue it makes sense given the company’s focus on both efficiency and security.
Introduced in 2017 with support from 30 large banks, Zelle is meant to provide a quicker and fee-free option to services like Venmo. Unlike Venmo, which transfers cash into a separate wallet before allowing you to send it to a bank account (and sometimes charges a fee for immediate access), Zelle lets you make immediate bank-to-bank transactions with no cost.
In 2024, Zelle users sent a recordful $1 trillion, cutting past all other peer-to-peer payment sites. A partial explanation for its efficacy is that It tends to engage users in larger transactions, such as paying rent, while Venmo has emerged as the go-to app for social transactions, like relatively small payments to settle a dinner bill.
Since most users access It through their banks, the end of its standalone app is unlikely to impede
