Zelle transaction volume rose 17% in Q2, Early Warning says

Zelle, the bank-owned person-to-person payment network that competes with Venmo, continued to grow in the second quarter.

According to Early Warning, the company that operates Zelle, 100 million transactions passed over the network between April 1 and June 30, an increase of 17% over the first quarter. About $28 billion in payments were made, an increase of 11% over the previous quarter. Consumers conducted an average of six transactions each during the three months. The average transaction amount was $281.

Venmo, Zelle's top competitor for person-to-person payments, handled $14 billion in the second quarter, according to its parent company, PayPal. PayPal also got Uber and UberEATS to add Venmo buttons to their apps.

A few more banks joined Zelle in Q2. Twenty-nine financial institutions have gone live on Zelle and another 119 are under contract to do so. Co-Op, FIS, Fiserv and Jack Henry & Associates are all working with Early Warning to connect banks’ core systems to the Zelle network.

The quarter was eventful for Zelle in other ways, too.

In April, it had to defend itself against widely reported allegations of fraud on the network. Asked about fraud levels on Thursday, an Early Warning spokeswoman said, " While we don’t disclose fraud numbers, I can tell you that we are observing fraud rates significantly below bank-provided estimates of other P2P payment options."

In May, founder and CEO Paul Finch said he will be stepping down next year.