Zelle payments top $1 trillion in 2024 as network’s growth outpaces rivals including PayPal

Zelle, the payments network run by bank-owned Early Warning Services, crossed $1 trillion in total volumes last year, which it said was the most ever for a peer-to-peer platform.

The firm said Wednesday that its user base jumped 12% to 151 million accounts in 2024, and that the total dollars sent on the platform jumped 27% from the year earlier.

Last year’s payment volumes were “by far the most money ever moved by a P2P payments service in a single year,” Denise Leonhard, general manager of Zelle, told CNBC.

Zelle, which was launched in 2017 in response to fintech platforms like Venmo, PayPal and CashApp, has some key advantages over those players. EWS is owned by seven of the biggest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, and Zelle allows for instant money transfers made within the apps of thousands of member institutions.

Its growth rate last year exceeded that of PayPal, which reported that total P2P payments volumes reached more than $400 billion.

Zelle’s meteoric rise comes amid accusations that the network and the three biggest U.S. banks on it failed to properly investigate fraud complaints or give victims reimbursement. The company has introduced measures to reduce fraud and has said that 99.95% of transactions are free of fraud and scams.

Growth is being driven as bank customers increasingly use Zelle instead of cash or checks, and as small businesses adopt the payment option, said Leonhard.

“People are using Zelle in order to do things like pay their rent or paying their nanny,” Leonhard said. “We want to continue to be top of mind for those consumers to be able to use this every day.”