Friday, October 6, 2017

First experience with Zelle, "fast bank transfer" app, not inspiring!

I've been reading about Zelle, this new app that's supposed to be a "new way to send money to almost anyone, on your phone, in minutes."  There's a footnote: it's "in minutes" only if your recipient is enrolled, 1-3 business days the first time. Well, OK.

I used the Capital One app on my phone to try and send money to my wife. She got a text message asking her to register for Zelle, which she left for me to do.

First, it offers to take a picture of the debit card to be used with your account. Cool! So I tried this, first with my wife's Aspiration card:


It seemed to work after jiggling the phone camera for a few minutes. I then put in the CVV number, checked the box "I approve the terms and conditions" ... and got a wait wheel and then:


Actually just "error 101" with no explanation: not "we don't recognize your bank", which I thought was a possibility.

So then I tried my wife's BECU debit card, my second choice because I don't want apps having access to any main bank account. But I tried it and first:

The glare from the finish seemed to keep the app from reading the numbers ... or something. It didn't work on this one. I messed around with this for a while and was just finished typing in the numbers and other information and hit continue and then:

I had been messing with the app for at least 1/2 hour!

Goodbye Zelle ... I may try this again in a few months, but sheesh.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You realize that it is built into most major online banking apps Right? Just do it that way, no one uses the zelle app itself lmao