Zelle

What is Zelle?

Formerly known as "clearXchange," Zelle allows customers of participating banks to engage in fast and easy person-to-person (P2P) payment services. The service is available today offering Citi U.S. retail bank customers the ability to make fast and free payments from their checking account to friends and family who bank with many of the major financial institutions in the United States. 

While Venmo is effortlessly adopted by the millennial population, Zelle is targeting the boomers and the Gen Xers. Its service comes already integrated into the participating bank’s app or can be downloaded as a standalone app. The money is transferred from one bank account to another in an instant through Zelle. The number of users has reached 27.4 million users.

The Problem

Not only we had to design the app but how to get users, who were already using Paypal and Venmo, to move over to the Zelle product. We highlighted that Zelle has no charge for the P2P payment service unlike Paypal and Venmo.

The overall objective was to design the Zelle app for Citi, a Zelle app for Citigold®, create a desktop experience, and develop a story marketing pages showing the simplicity of using the P2P payment service.

My role

Our team made up of a copywriter, project manager, account manager, two UX/UI Designers (including myself), were onsite at the Citi corporate office in Long Island city to work with their product team to bring this app to life.

1. I worked with UX to finalize wires before and during production.
2. My role was to take Citi's design system and design the user interface for both th mobile app and the desktop experience.
3. Create marketing and landing pages for both desktop and mobile breakpoints.
4. Present our designs to Product Managers and implement feedback.

Metrics

America’s surge in social distancing and a general reluctance to touch things has caused Zelle use to surge in recent weeks. Since the start of March 2020, enrollments in Zelle have increased at “more than double-digit rates above average.” The company also said 837 financial institutions were contracted to participate in the Zelle network and that customers of nearly 7,000 financial institutions used Zelle.

The company said that since March, more than half of the people sending money via the network were ages 25-54 and that use among baby boomers ages 55-72 was also up.

ACI Worldwide said it expected global real-time payments to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 23.4% between 2019 and 2024. In the United States, the anticipated compound annual growth rate was 42.1%.

Overall, Zelle reported major growth in 2019. In a January 2020 release, the company said it processed $187 billion in payments via 743 million transactions for 2019, representing year-over-year growth of 57% and 72%, respectively.