Zelle, the payment company backed by a consortium of big banks in the U.S., is gearing up to launch a P2P mobile payment app next week.
According to a news report in Reuters, the banks announced that the Zelle app will be available on both Apple and Android devices on Tuesday, Sept. 12, enabling people to send and receive instant mobile payments via Visa and Mastercard debit card accounts, even if their bank is not part of the network.
Prior to this change, customers could only access Zelle on smartphones and tablet devices via the 13 financial firms that rolled out the instant payments service in June. Since the launch, 17 more financial institutions have expressed interest in joining the payment network but aren’t yet completely connected, per the Reuters report.
“It is more likely that you will be able to send and receive payments with your friends and family with the expansion of the network,” Lou Anne Alexander, group president of payments at Early Warning, said in an interview with Reuters. Early Warning Services is owned by the banks and operates the network. The report noted that the banks in Early Warning’s network have handled 100 million payments totaling $33.6 billion during the first six months of the year and are likely to have a high number of customers who could benefit from Zelle.
Venmo, a competitor of Zelle that was acquired by PayPal, handled $14.8 billion in P2P payment transactions, noted the report. Sarah Grotta, a payments expert at Mercator Advisory Group, told Reuters that the Zelle app must work well for those customers who have Visa and Mastercard debit card accounts that aren’t connected to the network.
“They have to have a great experience, too, for this to take off,” said Grotta in the report. “It is still very much a work in progress.”