Zelle
Downsides:
- Requires an active debit card to access bank accounts; cannot use routing numbers.
- No web UI; there's only the app.
2021-05-12
- Does not recognize either of the banks I currently have accounts with (BBVA, Coastal Credit Union)
- Says "something went wrong" when I try to enter debit cards from either of those banks.
- This could be because those cards are both problematic for different reason (CCU because I think they may have deactivated it for disuse; BBVA because there's a 24(?)-hour lock on transfers after finally getting online banking working)
Planning to try again later.
2021-05-17
Tried again, after everything should have been unlocked and working -- but both accounts had a problem.
I also couldn't connect to Coastal because they deactivated my card for disuse and I haven't yet received a replacement.
So basically, Zelle is useless to me at this point.
2021-06-05
I tried again, after the card arrived and I had verified that it works (by shopping with it) -- Zelle still pops up a message saying there's some kind of problem and I need to contact customer support, but then the message slides back down out of the way before I can even screencap it.
...and Coastal Credit Union's app pops up with a notice about a pending charge of $0.00 -- so something almost worked.
"Calling" customer service should not be the only method of getting help, though.
2021-07-08
Tried CCU card yet again, cuz reasons -- and this time it worked; go figure. (Later note: I'm not sure what I was talking about here. Where was I "trying" this, and what did I mean by "trying"? Maybe there are notes in my password stash...)
2022-09-06
I was finally able to log into Zelle on -- get this -- a phone with no cell service. So any argument that they need to tie the account to a mobile device for security reasons is bogus. They sent a security code to the phone number they have for me, and it arrived on the other phone (and "Messages for web" on my desktop) so I entered it manually and that worked fine.