For Zelle, you need to enter your bank account, email and phone number. There is no fee, ever, and the money is transferred immediately. That’s why I prefer it.
If I’m sending or receiving money on a personal basis with someone I know, or know that I can trust I use interac e-transfer from my bank account. However, if I’m selling or buying something from someone I don’t know it’s cash only. There are scams out there that I’m sure I know nothing about.
When giving money to my father I’ve used Paypal. When I give money to my friend I do a direct bank transfer, since we happen to use the same bank.
I much prefer Zelle, and have only used Venmo when dealing with people who, for whatever reason, don’t use Zelle.
Zelle works with almost any bank, has no fees, and the money is transferred pretty much instantly. One more advantage is that with Zelle, you don’t need a separate app (although I think they do have one). You can use Zelle directly from your bank’s website or app. Just one less bit of clutter on your phone.
Whenever I’ve needed to send friends small amounts of money for pizza or movies or whatever, Venmo is the preferred method. Zelle is what I use for rent payments. PayPal is only when buying things.
My credit union doesn’t support Zelle, but so far I haven’t missed it. I use PayPal for online purchases when possible, and Venmo for reimbursing/getting reimbursed by friends.
Until recently I’d only had Venmo linked to my debit card, and I was happy to leave any small balance in place — knowing that eventually I’d use part/most of it to pay someone for something. But recently my balance became significant, due to reimbursements from several friends for tickets to upcoming events, and it finally became enough for me to want/need a transfer. I generally abhor don’t allow direct connections to my bank account, but yesterday I decided to go ahead and connect Venmo: once I confirm that the transfer is done, I’ll disable the connection and change my banking password. And cross my fingers.
You can use Zelle even if your bank/credit union isn’t a member; just download the Zelle app–however the weekly send limit is $500. Zelle member banks have much higher limits:
But you have to fund/authorize it with a debit or credit card. So it would essentially be the same as PayPal or Venmo.
But as you noticed from reading this thread different apps have different users and only some people use all of them.
Oh absolutely. I was merely pointing out that if your bank isn’t part of the Zelle network, there is no inherent advantage to using that payment platform.
BTW, I use all three of these apps.
Zelle or Venmo. Zelle through my Bank of America banking app. That’s my preference, as money goes directly into your bank account. That’s what I use for almost all my contract deposits (to me) these days. I haven’t gotten a check in a few years (minus payments from bigger institutions – I wish they would get with the program and pay me electronically.) I pay my vendors/contractors with Zelle, as well. Venmo I use with friends, since everyone seems to have it, but it takes a couple days to move it over to the bank from Venmo. Not a big deal in most cases, as I use it for stuff like splitting checks, paying back friends, getting tips, and the like. For what I’d consider petty cash, I use Venmo.
I think I’ve only once used Paypal for a p2p transfer of money. I just use that for buying stuff on the internet. I pretty much never send money from it.
For all local stuff, like the other Canadians in this thread, I use Interac.
I’ve used PayPal to pay people in India and Texas. It looks like both Zelle and Venmo are US-only.
My Spanish translator in Mexico doesn’t do PayPal, so I had to download another app called Wise for them.
I once sent a wire transfer from Canada to Finland through my bank ($25 fee even then, but there was no other choice).
I don’t understand the answers saying it’s not a thing in the US. I live in a pretty remote area (a neighbor island in Hawaii) and I have done plenty of bank transfer payments from my account to others, not only for one-time payments but also setting them up to occur on a regular basis. Actually one of the items on my things-to-do list for tomorrow is to make a transfer that way to someone who bought some stuff for me and I need to repay them.
I hate PayPal because about 15 years ago they caused me no end of grief due to their stupid system. Yes, it’s dumb of me to hold a grudge for 15 years. No, I have no intention of ever forgiving them.
A lot of banks offer online bill pay. If you want to pay your electric bill that way then the the ACH system is used. If you want to pay the neighbor kid who mows your lawn a check is mailed. In any event there is not an instant transfer which apparently you may get with the some of the online apps.
I don’t have pay pal but from what I know of it it’s like a personal cheque. The person paying you can easily “stop payment” if they have some minuscule complaint and you’re pretty much effed to get payment back.
Here in Taiwan, LINE pay or online or app bank transfers are common.
My wife uses LINE since she handles most of our purchases. I get paid via bank transfers from the students I teach using Zoom.
I had to think about why one would need to do that, but then I realised that sometimes you may want to split a bill.
Last week, I went to a birthday lunch with a group of my wife’s friends. There were a few couples and a couple of singletons, with a wide variation in diet etc. The restaurant had no problem splitting the bill for us, and we all just tapped our cards to pay. including the lady who was celebrating her 90th birthday.
What’s hard to understand? Many people either don’t carry cash or if they do get something from the ATM it will be a $20. It’s way easier to Venmo someone $13 when you don’t have the exact amount.
That works if everyone is at the restaurant and the restaurant doesn’t have a problem with giving separate checks. But there are many other situations where I need to give a someone a relatively small amount of money and I don’t want to wait until I see them again /get change/mail a check. For example, say my sister bought $34 tickets for both of us to some event - chances are good that I don’t have $34 in cash without making some effort to get change. I will have $20 or $40 or possibly $100 - and she may not have the $6 to give me back if I give her $40.
Cash is just becoming an old concept for many in the UK. I literally haven’t used cash in months. Shops all removed their ‘minimum spend’ on card payments during lockdown, and direct bank transfer to pay friends (or bills, or plumbers, or whatever) is just easy peasy. I have PayPal, but only use it to buy stuff online without having to put my card details in.
Haven’t written a cheque in years.