A number of customers has reported the loss of hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, over Zelle, when they used it for transactions with people they did not know.
As a scenario, the seller will ask the buyer to pay them through Zelle instead of PayPal – the latter that has long been the standard for these sorts of anonymous transactions. The buyer then transfers the money, assuming their bank will step in to help if anything goes wrong. After all, they are sending money directly to another bank account, because Zelle is also found in some banks’ mobile applications.
The scammer will keep the money, then shut down their bank account, and disappear. In other cases, the scammer may not even need to go to that extreme because the victim’s bank just tells their customer there’s nothing they can do, since the customer had authorized the Zelle transaction.
In the light of recent events, Zelle recommends users against using this app to pay for items sold by unknown persons and to exchange money only with person they can trust.
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