How Does Zelle Work?

Question

I'm curious: Does it use ACH behind the scenes? The RTP network? Some other system? Thanks to anybody who can satisfy my curiosity!

bell-cot · Accepted Answer

Advice: Avoid paying via Zelle. At $Job, we are a long-time customer of one of the large banks which owns Zelle. Said bank told us to avoid paying for anything via Zelle, unless we had very clear & easy legal recourse in case of fraud. The did not quite say "Zelle is only a better payment solution if you are cheating people"...but they came fairly close.

denimnerd42 · Answer

Depends on the implementation. Initially used ACH for settlement and now they are moving towards RTP. (https://www.earlywarning.com/press-release/early-warning-ser...)

yuppie_scum · Answer

The banks just venmo each other afterwards to settle up.

solarmist · Answer

patio11 could probably write an entire essay on this. (In fact, he might have, just not named it as such.)