[xp84]

Don't forget Venmo - PayPal smartly gobbled that up many, many years ago, and it has a great amount of mindshare (though I don't know how profitable it is). Zelle popped up later and somehow has plenty of users, but unlike Venmo, Zelle is a steaming pile of sh*t of user experience, due to it being a consortium of all the famously-tech-backwards big banks, which stood it up out of fear and jealousy that those "Internet" guys might find a way to disintermediate them somehow.

[onlypassingthru]

Zelle was built to preempt FedNow. The banks saw what was coming and wanted to own instant payments.

https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about....

[toast0]

> Zelle popped up later and somehow has plenty of users,

At least for me, Zelle is something I can do in my bank app, so I don't need to work with anything I wasn't already using.

It feels a lot easier to use than Venmo, but I dunno. It's one of like 7 options I have to transfer in the bank app.

[kelvinjps10]

what's the problem with zelle? it works in my bank app, it's fast, no fees, it's really easy to use

[xp84]

1. Bank apps are terrible, slow, and poorly organized, because banks. They suck at software. Venmo and Cashapp are good at software.

2. (Insert healthy amount of distrust of anything the banks all want, because there's zero chance it's in consumers' best interest)

3. We don't control anything, Zelle does. I have 5 bank accounts (multiple banks). I have one cell phone number, and of COURSE Zelle, like the banks that run it, insists on using cell phone numbers as basically their primary key and only identifier. When someone pays me by putting in my number, where will the money go? F--k if I know!