Now officially a year old, Zelle is steadily gaining momentum. San Francisco-based Bank of the West, the 29th largest bank in the country ranked by assets, announced Thursday it will join the bank-controlled person-to-person payment network, which already claims some of the biggest financial institutions in the country.
Also this week, data emerged indicating Zelle this year will overtake its most-often-cited rival, PayPal Holdings Inc.’s Venmo service, to claim the most active users among P2P apps.
Bank of the West, a unit of the European banking firm BNP Paribas, expects to incorporate Zelle into its mobile app by the second quarter, according to a news release. The bank operates more than 600 branches in 23 states, aside from its digital properties. Now, it’s signing on with a P2P network that officially launched only last June to take advantage of a rapidly growing consumer appetite for converting casual payments from cash and checks to more or less instant digital transfers.