- Key Insights: Zelle is partnering with Alacriti, and Paze has teamed up with Nuvei.
- What's at Stake: Early Warning Services has been trying to expand the reach of its flagship products through distribution partnerships.
- Supporting Data: Paze has other distribution partners, including Worldpay, Fiserv and Payfinia.
Early Warning is expanding the reach of its two flagship products, peer-to-peer payments platform Zelle and digital wallet Paze, with fresh distribution deals.
Zelle partnered with payments processor Alacriti to embed Zelle into Alacriti's Orbipay Payments Hub, which will allow Alacriti's community bank and credit union customers to offer Zelle to their own consumer, small business and commercial clients. Zelle is expected to be available on Alacriti's platform in the first quarter of 2026.
For Early Warning, the deal with Alacriti marks another avenue to extend Zelle's reach
"Too often, community banks, credit unions and minority depository institutions are held back by technology barriers. That's why our partnerships with Alacriti matter: they create new pathways that make it easier for these institutions to step in and deliver the modern payments experience their customers deserve," Denise Leonhard, general manager of Zelle, told American Banker.
"Resellers can bring something extra to the table for those institutions that might be held back by technology barriers — turnkey technology, support and operational resources," Leonhard said.
Early Warning's P2P payment network has been looking to boost small business payment volume after surpassing
There are more than 2,300 banks and credit unions using Zelle, according to Early Warning.
The Zelle integration will help Alacriti's financial institution clients keep their customers in the banking ecosystem rather than turn to outside fintechs for peer-to-peer payments, said Mark Majeske, senior vice president of faster payments at Alacriti, in a statement.
"Zelle is proven to deepen customer engagement and keep payments within the secured banking experience — reducing the need for customers to turn to outside fintech apps," Majeske said.
Zelle's digital wallet sibling, Paze, also secured a new distribution channel with Nuvei, a Montreal-based payment processor that will expand Paze's potential reach to more than 100,000 merchants.
"Nuvei's scale and merchant network make them a strong partner to help expand the availability of Paze checkout to more online merchants and their consumers," said Eric Hoffman, chief partnerships officer, Early Warning Services.
The deal will make Paze available to merchants on Nuvei's network on an opt-in basis, an Early Warning spokesperson told American Banker.
"Large merchants can choose to enable Paze through their existing Nuvei integration. It's an optional, low-effort add-on designed to complement their current checkout flow without requiring significant development work," the spokesperson said. "For small businesses who are on the Nuvei hosted pay page, they will all have Paze as a checkout option at launch."
The integration is underway, the spokesperson said, with availability expected later this year for U.S. merchants, and further, ongoing rollout planned into early 2026.
The deal marks the third distribution deal for Paze, which also
Early Warning Services – which is owned by Bank of America, Capital One Financial, JPMorganChase, PNC Financial Services Group, Truist Financial, U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo – has been securing distribution deals in an effort to help its bank owners secure a larger share of e-commerce transactions through Paze.
But other digital wallets, such as Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, have reached the point of ubiquity, making it more difficult for a new digital wallet provider to compete, no matter who its owners are, Tony DeSanctis, a senior advisor at Cornerstone Advisors, told American Banker.
