vanillabean

The Credit, Debit and Prepaid Card Programs, Credit Card Programs forum offers discussions such as

USA contactless credit/debit/transit (cards, stickers or NFC smartphones)
USA EMV cards: Availability, Q&A (Chip & PIN or Signature) [2017>]
Sending money from between US personal bank accounts via ACH
Apple and Goldman Sachs to partner on new credit card
Surging credit surcharges in the US?

but as far as I can tell, the topic of US bank transfers appears only in the context of the discussion of other topics.

I had an unexpected Zelle experience with Chase yesterday. Creating a new Zelle recipient and sending $500 which is the limit for new recipients prompted a review which subsequently locked my online Chase account including access to my credit cards.

A voicemail supposedly from the Chase fraud security department arrived on my phone. Googling the phone number showed half of the results thinking it�s a fraudulent number and the other half it�s genuine.

Opening the Chase app asked me to enter my social security number and my checking or debit number. Got the login unlocked after which the screen said to resend the Zelle amount which I did.

It went straight review once again. And once again the review locked my online account. The app this time asked me to click on the fraud security department�s phone number, a validation the number was genuine.

I called. A representative unlocked my online account and updated my file to note that a third try should alert the reviewer to accept the transaction. And it did solely so because I had discussed the matter on the phone with a human at Chase.

Did I mention that the recipient was an external bank account of mine and that I am using my phone number for this account�s Zelle, the phone number that Chase was relying on for the communication with me?

This is not what I have come to expect from Chase.

rasheed

This is what is happening with Zelle these days as the amount of scams are just increasing dramatically. Practically every time I want to do a Zelle, I have to acknowledge the fraud warning notice.

By the way, if the initial limit for a new recipient for you is $500, that is not the default, that is actually a lower limit indicating a trust issue. There are so many possibilities such as how often you have used Zelle (outside of this new recipient), etc. The fact you are sending money to yourself because the number was already on your Chase account could have also raised flags. Could you have used an email address not listed with Chase at all instead?

Chase does not get destination bank information (at least, it isn't supposed to), but they do a real-time request to verify the Zelle recipient existence and most banks will tell you the name field from Early Warning to ensure you are sending it to the person you are intending.

Zelle is a really powerful system as it has circumvented so many challenges in transferring funds in the US electronically, but it also happens to allow quick depletion of funds upon receipt with little chance for recovery (where stories of a Zelle refund are primarily the bank eating the loss). You can blame Chase, but not sure they see this issue as a customer service problem. Further Chase is actually making a big push for companies to accept Zelle payment instead of a check in particular (https://www.chase.com/business/banki...-banking/zelle).

vanillabean

It was probably because the actual initial limit is lower than $500. That I was sending to myself (to an email address which Chase otherwise doesn�t know about) didn�t come up until the phone conversation.

What�s up with Discover and Zelle by the way? I read something about fraud such as whitewashing. Of course as an alternative, standard transfers from high yield savings accounts such as Discover and Amex generally take only a day.

One thing by the way I have noticed with Chase is that you can set up recurring Zelle transactions. I haven�t seen that with any other bank.

cjw2001

For Marcus and Amex I've had outbound ACH transfers post same day if done early enough in the day.

rasheed

Yeah, there are also some new Fed sponsored tools coming this summer to do more intraday transfers allowance (FedNow), but banks are not obligated to post such transactions yet (although, they could if they are already doing Zelle). As also mentioned, some banks do PM ACH which can get posted same day. Before, ACH (debits and deposits) could only happen in the overnight/AM process, but now your balance at the beginning of the day might not include all electronic processes (aside from Zelle). I think Zelle can continue to offer a lower price to banks than the Fed (which is not free) to stay ahead.

This is good news in general especially if banks allow automatic retries if you need to do some real-time transfers to meet needs. This can also help improve payroll timeliness which I think is the big use of ACH that people watch closely. However, I sense that there is significant profit for employers (or rather their payroll vendor) to hold the money as long as possible. I think some of the enthusiasm about early payroll credits is disappearing because it is no longer pushed to FedACH 2 days ahead as it used to be. Instead, most are dropping the deposit the night before or even morning of that doesn't allow that early deposit credit that some CU and banks have been offering.

And as you have also seen, Zelle implementation at banks varies. I am not sure this is good (except some banks offer a lot more as mentioned), but some banks have done a lot of scheduling options for sends and requests that are beyond requirements to make the service much more useful. I think the next big change will be BillPay encouraging recipients to add a email/phone to accept via Zelle instead. The problem there is these companies will need better receipts to post such payments and more communication with the recipients. I am frankly still not happy with push ACH BillPay timely processing (which reduces the need to enter account credentials with each vendor), but I don't know what one can do except make payments earlier.

But I would agree that banks using PM ACH may be a way to avoid the problems you have experienced.

vanillabean

I was on a driving trip in Canada and decided to withdraw $20 on a couple of US credit union debit cards to see if I could transfer money by depositing the cash on the same ATMs.

That didn�t go well. Canadian credit union ATMs consistently offered a deposit option, but declined the type of transaction. South of the border, various US credit union ATMs offered no deposit option at all.

I had high hopes for credit union networks and am not sure which sort of limitations I ran into. Maybe you simply need to go inside the building and ask a teller to process a deposit slip.

vanillabean

I observed such a duplicate transaction this morning (recurring Zelle transfer) and submitted a report hours before the following statement was posted on the Chase website.

rasheed

Bank of America announced that they will not charge fees for any ACH initiated done from consumer deposit accounts on their Online Banking site. They also commit to next day assuming transfers are done by the daily time deadline (8pm ET).

I didn't know that banks still charged for ACH, but the next-day transfer seems to be a small improvement. I suspect consumer ACH has been dropping significantly with Zelle in place, but I can see people using it in particular with HYSA where Zelle is not common.

vanillabean

I noticed with one credit union that the account number used for a direct deposit, for an ACH transfer or listed at the bottom on a check is called a micr account number prefixed with additional digits and with another credit union called a book number. The shorter account number is probably just internal.

I have also noticed that when you have manually linked to an external account, I can see the full routing number of the other bank, but not the full account number, which is odd since I have just provided that information.

rasheed

The credit union difference in ACH or check clearing routing or account number is actually a different issue. Most CUs use another outside bank to handle the transaction, they are not actually direct Fed members for such transactions. So, the extra digits help the clearing bank route the transaction. I think the Fed is trying to discourage this by having lower fees for smaller assets banks, but you might be surprised how few transactions are handled in house at many non-mega CUs. This includes loans, bank statements, credit cards, etc.