Zelle is one of the most popular financial platforms of its kind, so it’s no surprise that the platform has been made a target for scammers. Here’s what to look out for and how to avoid a nasty surprise.
What Is Zelle?
Zelle is a peer-to-peer (P2P) payment service that makes it easy to send money from one bank account to another. The service is (at the time of writing) only available in the US, having been set up by some of the country’s largest financial institutions.
The fact that Zelle charges users no fees to send money has seen the service grow hugely in popularity over the last few years. All you need to use it is a bank account with a participating financial institution and the Zelle app for iPhone or Android. Some banking apps already have Zelle integration, which makes it particularly easy to send or receive money online.
The approachability and growth of Zelle as a service means it’s easy to set up and use, but this has also attracted scammers. Fortunately, most of the scams that target Zelle users are nothing new and should be easy to spot.
Zelle Scammers Use Fake Text Messages and Calls
Zelle scams mostly rely on social engineering, where a scammer builds trust so that the target will send money willingly. Similar scams have plagued banks and older payment services like PayPal for years.
One of the most common scams starts with a fake text message that requests approval for a pending transaction or issues a warning…
