Also, I don’t necessarily want to login to my bank app to send money to someone to cover dinner. But a secondary app, like Venmo, is fine.
My old house cleaner used Zelle, new one Venmo. I recently prepaid for a camping trip and needed 40 parents from kids’ school to pay me back. Most used Venmo, a few used Zelle, one sent to my wife’s PayPal. Most of my friends use Zelle (and close friends and family use Apple Cash because it has the least amount of friction, once set up).
My kid in preschool has an extra sports class and music class. Both are paid by Zelle. Last month I got a haircut and the owner had a sign saying she preferred Zelle (saves 2-3% vs Cc/Square). Zelle seems to be growing amongst small businesses.
I once sent a friend who works at Square some square cash. It went unredeemed because he forgot about it. Had to resend.
I’ve only used wires when buying homes.
I use ACH to pay taxes, some utilities, etc.
StateFarm lets me pay my insurance bill with ApplePay, which gives me 2% cash back.
In short, very Balkanized with no dominant system.
Yes the US does have Zelle technically, but it's not really a solution at least in the foreseeable future.
Going down this list, I don't think I've ever used a bank that didn't have it: https://www.zellepay.com/get-started
If you wanted a no-security-promises send-money-to-your-friends system, you probably already had PayPal or CashApp or something else of the sort. As far as I can tell, it's a popular fit for people who were scraping PayPal's "seriously, your selling-stuff-on-Facebook thing is a business, pay business fees" detection a little too closely.
The timing also seemed odd, with the promises of FedNow being "real soon now" -- do they intend to eventually run Zelle atop it, or is it an attempt to build an installed base (and vendor lock in) before every bank in the country can say "Well, we're all on the same network, so transfers are immediate for everyone?"
