In the battle over U.S. mobile person-to-person payments, Zelle topped Venmo — at least last quarter.
In the third quarter alone, Zelle processed $84 billion on 323 million transactions, the company announced today. The peer-to-peer network processed more than 1 billion transactions over the past year, a new record for the payments network.
Meanwhile, PayPal‘s Venmo, Zelle’s main competitor in the U.S., processed about $44 billion last quarter, up from $37 billion in the second quarter. Venmo did not disclose the volume of its transactions.
“Zelle launched right when mobile payments were becoming mainstream, and Zelle has a captive audience,” said Talie Baker, senior analyst with Aite Group. “All banks on the Zelle network can promote its use to their customer bases while Venmo growth is more organic and happens by word of mouth.”
The $84 billion in payments processed through Zelle marks an 18% quarter-over-quarter jump. Meanwhile, Zelle processed $4.5 billion of payments to small businesses last quarter, a 30% quarter-over-quarter jump.
Early Warning Services, the network operator of Zelle, is owned by Bank of America, Truist, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank and PNC.
PayPal, which acquired Venmo in 2013, has had difficulty monetizing the peer-to-peer network. PayPal is using merchant payments, a debit card and a 1% instant transaction fee to monetize Venmo. Venmo also launched a credit card in October to generate revenue. QR codes, which Venmo rolled out as a payment method this year, is yet another aspect of the company’s monetization push.
See also: Smaller FIs fail to meet customer demand for Zelle
PayPal reported today that it generated $5.46 billion of revenue last quarter, 25% year-over-year growth. The company announced today that it expected its revenue to continue to grow 20% to 25% next quarter.
PayPal has a market capitalization of $218.4 billion.
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