P2P payments service Zelle was once not too keen on social media, but its new video message feature might indicate a change of heart.
The video feature, which is being marketed on Zelle’s website seems a little, well… unusual. The feature works this way: the user adds the name of the person who owes them money along with how they are related (friend, family, co-worker, etc). Then Zelle creates a shareable video of actor and rapper Daveed Diggs asking them to pay up. (In one test we did, the embedded video did not change based on our inputs, but presumably the packaging in which it was sent did.)
PayPal‘s P2P service Venmo was created to cater to the social media savvy generation, allowing users to share their transactions, post emojis or comment on other people’s transactions. When Zelle launched thanks to seven major banks getting together with Early Warning to create the service, the tone of Zelle was supposed to be very different. For one, it was often described to more private. Of course, the banks that use Zelle still maintain a private, no-social media interface, but the independent Zelle app seems to be marching to a different tune.
Not much is being said about this new feature, even on social media platform Twitter.
As of April this year, Zelle overall has processed over $25 billion in transaction volume. In contrast, Venmo has only $14.2 billion in transaction volume as of June 30.





