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Zelle, the peer-to-peer payments service from Early Warning Services LLC, announced early Wednesday that dollar volume sent over the network last year totaled a record $1 trillion, up 27% from 2023.
Transactions for the year totaled 3.6 billion, a 25% year-over-year increase, while the number of consumer and business accounts enrolled on the network came to 151 million, an increase of 16 million new accounts compared to 2023.
Zelle’s dollar volume in 2024 far outpaced that of competing P2P services. PayPal Holdings Inc.’s popular Venmo service, for example, posted $293 billion in dollar volume in 2024, while PayPal as a whole processed P2P volume of $402.3 billion.
“Our record growth in 2024 was driven by the fact that Americans need and rely on Zelle,” Denise Leonhard, general manager for Zelle, says by email. “For consumers, whether they are tipping their lawn-care pro, splitting the bill at a restaurant or paying their rent, it’s a vital financial tool,”
Small businesses remain a significant growth engine for the network. In 2024, small businesses sent or received more than 500 million transactions totaling $283 billion in dollar volume. Transaction and dollar volume each increased 32% year-over-year, according to Zelle. In addition, 23 million Zelle users sent payments to a small business during the fourth quarter last year.
“For small businesses, enabling fast, reliable payments to vendors, rewarding employees, and keeping cash flow steady is a game changer,” Leonhard adds.
Zelle now has more than 2,200 financial institutions on its network, 95% of which are community banks and credit unions. Many of the community banks and credit unions on the network are located in areas where few banking options exist, such as rural communities, Early Warning says.
A survey of consumers and small businesses using Zelle revealed 74% say the P2P network has had a positive impact on how they view their financial institution. In addition, one in three Zelle users say they would open a new account at a financial institution that offers Zelle if their current financial institution stopped providing it. Early Warning ran the survey of more than 1,000 users in July and August last year in conjunction with Nonfiction Research.
On the fraud-fighting front, Zelle says it “empowered more than 73 million consumers with information about the risks of fraud and scams” in 2024. Late last year, the network was sued by the Consumer financial Protection Bureau, along with two of its bank owners, Bank of America and Chase.
To help combat scams and fraud on its network, Zelle became a founding member of the Aspen Institute National Task Force for Fraud and Scam Prevention and is partnering with such organizations as the Better Business Bureau Institute for Marketplace Trust and the National Council on Aging to educate consumers about how to avoid scams and falling victim to fraud.
