Zelle is the choice of scammers. Incidentally, Zelle offers no guarantees or refunds. I don't know why anyone would use Zelle under those circumstances. Some banks will automagically sign their customers up for Zelle accounts, exposing them to scam risks for which there is no resolution. Money gone.
IMO, the risk is pretty minimal. Zelle isn’t a 3rd party payment platform — it’s a feature/standard a bank implements to give you instant peer-to-peer bank transfers. Zelle the company is owned by the banks, including Bank of America.
So this is just BoA adding a feature they partly created to their banking suite. That in itself isn’t a red flag.
Zelle itself is also secure. You have to be fully logged into your bank account to use it! So it’s as secure as any banking service.
The reason someone would use Zelle is p2p bank transfers between people you know. Like if your friend wrote you a check to cover their half of a hotel on a vacation. Just replace that with Zelle. It’s better than, say, Venmo because it goes directly between bank accounts immediately, without the intermediate third party and waiting 3 days for Venmo to give you your money.
The only risk you’re exposed to is if you blindly send money to someone you don’t know, which you shouldn’t be doing on most platforms. (For example, you only really get buyer protection using goods and services type transfers on other payment apps, which have extra transaction fees.)
I think the end line is that banks should have better fraud protection for bank accounts. Including debit cards, ACH, checks, and Zelle. I supposed my summary is that Zelle isn’t really unique. It’s just faster bank transfers
Zelle has been subject to tens of thousands of scams. If it's so secure, why doesn't Zelle have any guarantees? If money ever goes out, it will never come back, unlike competitors such as PayPal which have a successful refund process.
The argument is that Zelle helps you hand your friend a $20 and is secure in that context. If you use it out of that context you are using it “incorrectly”.
Yup, this happened to me. I didn't sign up for Zelle. Didn't know I even had it. I lost $3,000 and BofA refused to reverse or refund any of the charges. Total BS.
