16th Annual Field Guide to Innovative Payments

It’s May, and that means it’s time for our annual exercise to seek out and describe the payments players, apart from the big networks, that are rewriting the rules for the digital exchange of value.

Capital One Financial Corp.’s bombshell announcement in February that it is offering to acquire Discover Financial Services in all-stock deal valued at $35.3 billion was one of the biggest wow moments the payments industry has seen in years, if not more than a decade.

Since 2004, Digital Transactions has traced the course of payments innovation through its nimblest practitioners—the startups, the fintechs, the smaller networks, the nonbank arrivistes—and their services and products, their strategies and tactics, their successes and pratfalls. In 2009, we distilled what we were learning about these innovators into a handy guide inside the May issue, and called it a “field guide” to what were then known, somewhat cheekily, as alternative payments.

Well, the guide worked out so well we decided to update it every May. And so you now hold in your hands the 16th edition. A few years ago, we dropped the “alternative payments” rubric and renamed our effort as a guide to innovative payments. We think the new adjective better fits our purpose in sorting out the varied new pathways the nonbanks, and yes, banks and major networks, are forging for the payments business.

The guide is as much about strategies and tactics as it is about emerging technology and new markets. We invite you to read this guide much as you have since 2009, with an eye to how it might inform your decisions, sharpen your competitive instincts, and bring to light, perhaps, some developments you had not encountered before—as well as spotlight some potential partners.

Digital Transactions generally defines an innovative payment system as any network or consumer interface (a mobile app, for example) that enables payments in a way that relies on or stands apart from a major network and/or stands between that network and the consumer in an important way. We emphasize consumer-facing payment systems, but of course many, if not most, of the systems profiled here market themselves to merchants to maximize acceptance of their products.

Information for the listings comes from news reports over the past year, company Web sites and spokespersons, and financial filings in a few cases. We mention pricing for the merchant and consumer when it is relevant and publicly available. The “Year Founded” line refers to the year the particular service was founded, not the parent company, except in those cases where the two coincide.

Accelerated Checkout

Field Notes: Friction is the sticky part of the online checkout, and merchants are keen to eliminate as much of it as possible. To that end, the concept of the accelerated checkout has, well, accelerated. Accelerated checkout saves customers’ payments and shipping information so returning customers can more quickly complete payment for their orders, says Shopify Inc. Think Apple Pay, Google Pay, or PayPal, where not only is the payment information stored, but shipping details, too.  One new entrant is Paze, the upcoming digital wallet from Early Warning Services LLC. That service, scheduled for broad availability later this year, will see up to 150 million credit cards issued by seven large U.S. banks in the digital wallet. Accelerated checkout is not a new endeavor, but is getting more attention as competitors offer more services and accept more online transactions, especially mobile ones, and as faster checkout becomes more popular with consumers. The checkout of today and those coming tomorrow are striving toward eliminating surprises and giving consumers choice of payment methods.

Account to Account Payments

Field Notes: Account-to-account payments are undergoing a potentially giant increase in use and primacy among consumers and payments companies. Long a staple of electronic bill payments, the payment method’s future could be impacted by more use cases, especially those involving consumers and the rapidity of real-time payments. The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC’s RTP network, a major exemplar of A2A networking, was joined last year by FedNow, the real-time payments service from the Federal Reserve. The potential in A2A lies in new uses cases that could be attractive to consumers, payments companies, and businesses. One such use case could center on request for payment. With RFP, financial institutions can enable one party, such as a business, to request a payment from another, like a consumer. When the customer pays the request, the money is transferred instantly, a Fed Web site explains. TCH also offers an RFP capability. The potential lies in such cases as the real-time payment of a nearly overdue bill or, perhaps, a payment at the point of sale. A2A could be a precursor to real-time POS payments, though the use case would need to be refined. Consumers would have to educated about the protocols and security measures. Merchants would have to adopt a new payment scheme, and payments companies would have to hone their sales pitches to make them more enticing.

Amazon Pay (includes Amazon One)
Parent: Amazon.com Inc.
Headquarters: Seattle
Founded: 2007 (including predecessor services)
Web: pay.amazon.com

Field Notes: The big news with Amazon Pay is that its Just Walk Out payment technology will no longer be used in Amazon Fresh grocery stores. The tech, according to a report from The Verge, is being removed from the Fresh stores in favor of Amazon’s Dash Cart, a shopping cart with a camera to scan items placed in the basket, and built-in point-of-sale technology. Just Walk Out will remain in use in some smaller corner stores, the report said. Meanwhile, Amazon continues to make the tech available to others. Shift4 Payments Inc. adopted it last fall with an eye to deploying it at stadiums and other venues. Also, food-delivery provider Grubhub implemented Just Walk Out at a Loyola University Maryland campus store. Transact Campus Inc., an on-campus payments provider, adopted it, too, as has Six Flags Great Adventure, a New Jersey theme park. Amazon also added Citi Flex Pay, the card issuer’s installment-loan program, to the Amazon Pay digital wallet. Amazon also released a smart phone that consumers can use to self-enroll in Amazon One, its palm-based identity service, by taking a photo of their palm.

Apple Pay
Parent: Apple Inc.
Headquarters: Cupertino, Calif.
Founded: 2014
Web: apple.com/apple-pay

Field Notes: Apple Pay has notched notable achievements in the past year, but one lawsuit looms large. In March, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against the tech giant over allegations it monopolizes smart-phone markets. Among the claims, in addition to suppressing mobile cloud streaming services and others, Justice said Apple prevents third-party apps from offering tap-to-pay functionality and inhibits the creation of cross-platform third-party digital wallets. Apple said it will defend itself against the suit. Despite this action, Apple Pay continues to solidify its position as a top digital wallet. PayPal Holdings Inc. is finally enabling its PayPal- and Venmo-branded credit cards to be available in Apple Wallet. Home-improvement chain Lowe’s, a one-time backer of a failed merchant-led wallet called CurrentC, enabled has Apple Pay acceptance in its stores.

Blockchain
Founded: 2010

Field Notes: The distributed ledger undergirding most cryptocurrencies continues to find strategic adoption in payments. One big mover is Visa Inc. The card network announced late last year it would expand its cryptocurrency services into merchant acquiring, largely for cross-border transactions. The move, which Visa calls a pilot project, involves the major merchant processors Worldpay and Nuvei for settlement to sellers in fiat currencies. Visa’s scheme is pegged to Circle Internet Financial’s USD stablecoin. Not to be left out, Mastercard Inc. announced its Multi Token Network, a set of capabilities to make transactions within digital-asset and blockchain ecosystems more secure, scalable, and interoperable, it said in a blog post. It includes the Mastercard Crypto Credential, which offers a set of common verification standards and infrastructure, and demonstrations of how central bank digital currencies can be used to purchase assets on the public blockchain.

BNPL

Field Notes: With a surge in use during the pandemic, the buy now, pay later payment option is an integral part of the payments arena. As it matures, however, new uses and issues surface. BNPL provider Klarna AB hoped to counter some criticism of the installment-payment method by launching Wikipink, a Web page that provides details about its BNPL business, such as repayment rates, late-fee rates, and consumer demographics. Yet, a Bankrate survey earlier this year found that overspending and missing a payment or two remain common issues for BNPL users. While noting that BNPL can be useful, it’s how consumers use it that can impair the experience. “Consumers can trick themselves into overspending with BNPL because they are spreading out the payments,” said Ted Rossman, a senior industry analyst at Bankrate. BNPL continues to expand. Galileo Financial Technologies grew its BNPL platform to enable banks and fintechs to offer new installment plans post-purchase through a consumer’s existing credit or debit card. The U.S. BNPL market is projected to grow to $132.7 billion by 2027, up 14% from $116.3 billion in 2023, according to Research and Markets.

Cash App
Parent: Block Inc.
Headquarters: San Francisco
Founded: 2013
Web: cash.app

Field Notes: Cash App, the peer-to-peer payments app from Block Inc., is out to transform itself by adding banking services. With 3 million active users, the app has the customer base to justify new use cases. In a shareholder letter, Block said it intends for Cash App “to become one of the top providers of banking services to households in the United States which earn up to $150,000 per year….” As of December 2023, 2 million active users deposited their paychecks into Cash App each month. Block’s strategy is to target this base, moving upmarket to households with annual incomes up to $150,000. “Strengthening our P2P network with families in the U.S.—including with higher-household-income parents and their dependents—is one lever that we believe will contribute meaningfully to our ability to move up market over the medium term,” the letter continues. The third piece is to drive the social aspect of Cash App, such as by enabling Square sellers to customize profiles in the app. In a related move, Marqeta Inc. said in 2023 it will continue to process transactions for Cash App’s card product for another four years.

Clover
Parent: Fiserv Inc.
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, CA
Founded: 2012
Web: Clover.com

Field Notes: Clover the point-of-sale technology platform Fiserv acquired in 2019 when it bought First Data Corp., continues to make market-share gains. Clover revenue in 2023’s fourth quarter jumped 30% year-over-year. Much of this growth, he added, is coming through relationships with independent software vendors, the parties that weave payments capability into overarching business software. “We continue to grow pretty meaningfully in the ISV channel. We see growth there for Clover,” Bob Hau, Fiserv chief financial officer, said earlier this year. Executives noted that restaurants continue to be a strong customer base for Clover. That comes as Fiserv lands more stadium and venue installations for Clover. Some notable ones include the Cleveland Browns Stadium, a deal that included nearly 500 devices, and the Prudential Center, home of the NHL New Jersey Devils, which had more than 300 Clover devices installed. Clover is more than devices. Eligible Clover merchants also can take cash advances against future credit card receivables. At the end of 2023, Clover Capital receivables stood at $281 million, a 71.3% increase from $164 million at the end of 2022.

JP Morgan Unified Commerce
Parent: JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Headquarters: New York, New York
Founded: 2014
Web: https://www.jpmorgan.com/payments

Field Notes: Today’s consumers expect to move seamlessly between digital and physical channels when purchasing. They are also less tolerant of technical glitches that degrade the quality of the buying experience. To meet that need, J.P. Morgan Payments has launched a unified commerce platform that offers in-store, online, and mobile checkout capabilities. The platform provides merchants a single access point to view their consumer-transaction and marketing data. Unlike omnichannel commerce, which connects multiple channels through multiple pieces of software, unified commerce enables merchants to sync their online store and in-person sales. That makes it easier for merchants to keep track of what’s happening across all sales channels in real-time. Consumers benefit from the technology by having the ability to engage across multiple channels while shopping, powered by a single platform and while enjoying a consistent shopping experience regardless of channel. With unified commerce, merchants can simplify payment-related business processes and offer consumers the option to use their preferred payment method. As a result, merchants can conduct business while allowing consumers to transact however they please, J.P. Morgan says.

Google Wallet
Parent: Alphabet Inc.
Headquarters: Mountain View, CA
Founded: Android Pay, 2015; Google Wallet, 2011
Web: pay.Google.com

Field Notes: Google Wallet is so popular it prevented sibling Google Pay from gaining meaningful market share in the United States, which ultimately led to Google Pay’s demise. Parent Alphabet Inc. plans to discontinue Google Pay in the U.S. market in June. Google Wallet’s advantage, in part, is that it has more functionality, such as allowing consumers to hold a wallet balance, enabling send and receive to and from friends in the United States, and permitting use of a credit or debit card in stores and online. By comparison, Google Pay allows users to tap and pay in store and to redeem loyalty rewards, gift cards, and offers in store. Alphabet’s decision to discontinue Google Pay stems from its strategy to simplify its digital-wallet offerings, especially from the perspective of marketing and branding. The move also eliminates any potential confusion among consumers regarding the two wallets, payments experts say. Alphabet has also beefed up the wallet’s functionality by adding the ability to store a digital image of a state-issued ID card or driver’s license. The challenge facing Google Wallet going forward, payments experts say, is making sure it continues to meet consumer’s and merchant’s expectations.

MagicCube
Parent: MagicCube Inc.
Headquarters: Santa Clara, CA
Founded: 2014
Web: MagicCube.co

Field Notes: MagicCube’s iAccept SoftPOS app got a big shot in the arm in the United States earlier this year when it partnered with the major processor Shift4 Payments Inc. The deal extends MagicCube’s merchant reach, especially in markets such as restaurants, a segment in which Shift4 specializes. Given Shift4’s merchant reach and technical capabilities, the deal not only boosts MagicCube’s business, it also puts sofPOS in general on the radar screen. SoftPOS allows contactless payment cards and digital wallets to be tapped or waved on or at a smart phone to pay for purchases. In this way, the technology lets merchants bring the point of sale to the point of interaction with the customer within the store. Example: pay at the table in a restaurant. The technology is also well-suited to mobile merchants. Once merchants are introduced to the technology, they quickly embrace it, payments experts say. The number of merchants using softPOS is expected to explode in the coming years to more than 34.5 million worldwide by 2027, up from 6 million in 2022, according to Juniper Research.

Marqeta
Parent: Marqeta, Inc.
Headquarters: Oakland, CA
Founded: 2010
Web: Marqeta.com

Field Notes: This card-issuing platform and payments provider has continued to build on the momentum it gained last year. In April, Marqeta partnered with Rain Technologies Inc., a provider of earned-wage access solutions. Marqeta will provide a Rain-branded debit card onto which employers can load employee wages. Marqeta’s platform also allows Rain to offer secured and unsecured credit cards and employee rewards. The deal is significant because it reflects the demand for employee paycheck flexibility and faster wage payment, Marqeta says. Faster wage payment can reduce employee turnover, the company adds. Marqeta has also renewed its agreement to process transactions for Block Inc.’s Cash App Card through June 2027. And now Marqeta has begun expanding outside the United States, striking a deal with Fitbank, a Latin America-based banking-as-a-service platform, to enter Brazil. Marqeta announced in February its platform for the first time had processed more than $1 billion in volume in a single day. Marqeta chief executive Simon Khalaf attributes the company’s growth to strong execution, enhanced product offerings, and more partnerships.

Open Banking

Field Notes: Helped by a ruling from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, open banking has become table stakes in the United States. The CFPB rule, issued in October, is helping speed the transition to open banking as it gives consumers more control over their financial information and offers additional safeguards against firms abusing that data. Open-banking econsumer accounts to verify ownership and funds availability for funds transfers. Fintechs, the primary drivers behind open banking, continue to push the technology. Dwolla Inc., for example, has launched an open-banking service for mid- and enterprise-size businesses. The service streamlines businesses’ ability to embed open banking in existing applications through a single API, as opposed to relying on connections to multiple vendors. By enabling mid-size and large businesses to consolidate account-to-account payment functionality under one roof, Dwolla expects to simplify payments for businesses by enabling faster time-to-market and improved operational efficiency. Late last year, Dwolla integrated its Dwolla Connect platform for account-to-account payments in open finance to enable clients to transfer open-finance data to the Dwolla platform.

Payment Orchestration

Field Notes: A relatively new technology, payments orchestration is quickly gaining favor with merchants. The reason: the technology makes it easier for merchants to offer a variety of payment methods while accessing data that provides insights into those new methods. In a nutshell, payment orchestration brings together payment-service providers, acquirers, and banks in a single, unified app that manages the payment process from beginning to end. With this single integration point, merchants can add new and alternative payment methods without complicating their operational processes. It also simplifies data security, as merchants don’t have to manage each payment method or gateway separately. In addition, security features such as tokenization and encryption are often standard. Such features ensure that payment data is protected throughout the entire payment process, advocates say. Payment orchestration technology also helps merchants by providing insights into consumers’ payment preferences. And the technology enables merchants to route transactions to processors based on such factors as cost, availability, and performance. Depending on how all that works and how much it costs, payment-orchestration technology can be music to merchants’ ears.

Pay By Bank

Field Notes: It’s not a new concept, but consumers and merchants are rapidly migrating toward pay by bank technology. There are multiple drivers behind the technology’s burgeoning popularity. Consumers like the technology because it enables them to use their bank account to quickly to make a purchase, as opposed to a credit or debit card or other alternative payment method. Merchants like the technology for several reasons. First, most pay by bank offerings use the automated clearing house system to route transactions, which is a lower-cost alternative to the credit card networks. The technology can save merchants up to 50% in network fees, says pay by bank evangelist Fiserv Inc. And transactions made using pay by bank technology carry a funds guarantee, which reduces the risk of a chargeback. Fiserv is actively touting the benefits of pay by bank such as convenience, low cost, security, and simplicity. It’s also positioning the technology as a companion to other digital payment methods, including credit and debit cards.

PayPal
Parent: PayPal Holdings Inc.
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Founded: 1998
Web: paypal.com

Field Notes: It’s been a busy year so far for PayPal. During the fintech’s fourth-quarter 2023 earnings call, new chief executive Alex Chriss stated the company will aggressively promote its branded checkout service, calling it a critical part of PayPal’s value proposition. Branded checkout is when a merchant offers PayPal as a payment option on its site rather than having PayPal process transactions in the background. A few weeks later, PayPal scored a victory over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when a U.S. District judge overruled the CFPB’s efforts to require PayPal to disclose fees associated with its digital wallets. The judge ruled that wallets are not prepaid cards and therefore not subject to fee-disclosure rules. Last month, PayPal announced its PayPal and Venmo wallets have been enabled in the United States for Visa+, which allows consumers to send and receive money using a number of person-to-person payment apps. Next, PayPal announced its Xoom cross-border payments service will enable users in the United States to send money funded by the stablecoin USD, which is denominated in U.S. dollars. The new service will enable PayPal users to convert PayPal’s own stablecoin version, PYUSD, to USD and then use the USD to fund the transfer.

Paze
Parent: Early Warning Services
Headquarters: Scottsdale, Ariz.
Founded: 2023
Web: paze.com

Field Notes: Does the world need yet another digital wallet? Last year, Early Warning, whose services include the Zelle peer-to-peer payments network (see the Zelle entry below), decided the answer is “Yes.” Early Warning thought it saw a big opportunity in the world of mobile wallets. The opportunity lay in an app that would offer cards issued by the big banks that own Early Warning, plus more over time, and would work smoothly and exclusively in e-commerce transactions. So it launched Paze, with the backing of the big banks—Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo—that own Early Warning. The wallet, which launched in select states early this year, has addressed the “smoothly” part head-on, with cards pre-loaded, the ability to add different shipping addresses, and a card updater capability. It’s all aimed at one big problem in the world of cards: friction in online checkouts. A report early this year from Paze found that 71% of some 1,000 consumers surveyed had abandoned a transaction at checkout, largely because of a complicated process and worries about security. With at least 150 million  cards possible from the seven bank owners, an effective solution to cart abandonment would give Paze a huge lift.

Real Time Payments/FedNow/The Clearing House

Field Notes: Many payments observers hailed last July, when the Federal Reserve officially launched FedNow, as the start of the age of real-time payments. It was a momentous event to be sure, but backers of a private-sector alternative, The Clearing House Payments Co.’s Real Time Payments network, would beg to differ. RTP, after all, has been transferring funds in real-time since 2017. Now the market is getting a chance to compare the two instant-payment systems. FedNow, which had been in development for years before it launched, claimed at least 470 participating institutions by February. But it appears there’s plenty of interest in both systems as banks, merchants, and businesses seek out networks that can switch payments faster. TCH’s RTP network saw its transaction volume climb to about 77 million in the first quarter, from a bit more than 50 million only a year earlier, according to figures from TCH. Promising services like request for payment, coupled with developing interest in account-to-account transfers, are combining with lightning-fast money-movement capability to draw interest in real-time payments. Indeed, there’s probably enough of that interest to sustain both FedNow and its private-sector alternatives.

Secure Remote Commerce
Parent: American Express, Discover, Mastercard, Visa
Headquarters: N.A.
Founded: 2019
Web: emvco.com

Field Notes: Secure Remote Commerce is not so much a brand as a behind-the-scenes digital-payment mechanism developed by EMVCo, the standards body controlled by the global payment card networks. Referred to as “click to pay” by the networks, SRC’s purpose is to replace the clutter of payment brands on e-commerce checkout pages with a common buy button that offers a unified and simple purchase process. The object is to allow consumers to use a preferred payment card online with the same confidence he or she feels when wielding the same card in a physical store. With e-commerce booming, the simplified checkout is getting a workout. Total U.S. online sales in the fourth quarter came to $285.2 billion, up 7.5% over the same period in 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Some of that momentum is left over from the pandemic, but few would doubt the common buy button concept has played a role.

Stripe
Parent: Stripe Inc.
Headquarters: San Francisco and Dublin, Ireland
Founded: 2010
Web: https://stripe.com

Field Notes: In the payments business, there are processors, and then there are full-service processors. In the latter category, the company to beat, the experts say, is Stripe. The company’s focus on developers—the third-party software mavens that weave payments capability into the programs they’re creating for other businesses—and on technology for payments facilitation—enabling firms to offer their merchant accounts to other companies for payments acceptance—has paid off big time, observers say. Stripe is privately held, so it can and does keep its financials close to the vest. Still, a couple of available numbers indicate the magnitude of its growth. Its global payment volume doubled between 2020 and 2022, to $817 billion, according to the company and estimates from CBInsights. It supports payments for more than 1.3 million Web sites, a number exceeded only by Google Pay and Amazon Payment, according to figures from BuiltWith.com (though if you add up PayPal Express Checkout and other PayPal sub-entities, Stripe drops to fourth).

Tap to Pay (iPhone and Android)

Field Notes: The ability to complete a card transaction with a mere tap of the card (with the proper chip for near-field communication) on a smart phone (with tap-to-pay software) has now established itself with both iPhone and Android devices. Merchants are able to unlock contactless payment acceptance through a supporting iOS app on an iPhone XS or later device. At checkout, the merchant prompts the Apple-wielding customer to hold his/her iPhone or Apple Watch to pay with Apple Pay, a contactless credit or debit card, or other digital wallet near the merchant’s iPhone, and the payment will be completed using NFC technology. Apple said all Tap to Pay on iPhone transactions will be encrypted and processed using the Secure Element in iPhone. But it wasn’t long before developers began creating Android-based services.

Venmo
Parent: PayPal Holdings Inc.
Headquarters: San Francisco
Founded: 2009
Web: venmo.com

Field Notes: Venmo has been around long enough to be the grandpappy of peer-to-peer payment apps, Long enough, in fact, to have become a verb, as in “I’ll Venmo you what I owe you tomorrow.” PayPal reported the service’s payment dollar volume rose 9% last year, an improvement on 2022’s 7% rate, while accounting for 18% of total PayPal volume both years. Only branded PayPal volume and unbranded card processing activity outranked the P2P service. Several developments helped propel that activity. PayPal added tap-to-pay capability in June, while in August Hallmark Cards began printing a QR code in its products that allows recipients to trigger a Venmo payment from the card’s sender. But bad news struck in December with Amazon.com’s decision to drop Venmo after only a year of accepting the payment method. It was a blow for PayPal, which had gone through long months of negotiation to get Venmo accepted by the e-commerce giant.

Visa+
Parent: Visa Inc.
Headquarters: San Francisco
Founded: 2023
Web: https://usa.visa.com/products/visa-plus.html

Field Notes: Peer-to-peer payments capability lets people send or receive funds in a flash—but only to or from people who are using the same service. A Venmo user can’t send money to a Zelle zealot. The answer, says Visa, is network interoperability, and to that end the big card network a year ago announced Visa+, a network-of-networks concept that at its inception boasted participation from PayPal, Venmo, DailyPay, i2c, TabaPay, and Western Union. By early April, Astra, Brightwell, Cross River Bank, and Fiserv had agreed to support Visa+ APIs. The service lets users select a so-called payname (though users are not required to have a Visa card), which is linked to the user’s payment app but enables receipt of funds from users of the participating networks. But one key network—Zelle—is not participating, creating a gaping hole in Visa+’s network of networks. Zelle is a hard network to ignore. It finished 2023 with 120 million consumer and business accounts and $806 billion in volume on 2.9 billion transactions (see next entry for more on Zelle).

Zelle
Parent: Early Warning Services
Headquarters: Scottsdale, Ariz.
Founded: 2011 (as ClearXchange)
Web: zellepay.com

Field Notes: Zelle had a bang-up year in 2023 (see the previous entry), but for all its success in ratcheting up its user count and dollar volume, it found itself spending much of the year fending off probes from a group of U.S. Senators intent on what they view as the network’s inattention to stopping fraud. Led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the lawmakers charged Zelle with a failure to address scams—cases in which users are tricked into sending money to fraudsters. For its part, Zelle produced statistics showing that less than 0.1% of its transactions are fraudulent. “Most of the Zelle fraud losses are related to scams, which is a growing form of fraud in the U.S.,” David Mattei, a strategic advisor in the fraud and AML practice at Datos Insights, told Digital Transactions News in November. “And scam fraud is hitting many payment types, not just Zelle. However, Zelle is being called out.” The scam controversy made for an uncomfortable year for Early Warning Services, Zelle’s operator, and the seven big banks that own Early Warning— Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo. But with P2P volumes on an upswing, the discomfort is likely to be transitory.