Zelle Restores Service After Outage Disrupts Payments for Bank Customers
Zelle is back up and running after a chaotic afternoon that froze up the money transfer service for millions of customers due to a broken system upgrade for much of the day, The Post has learned. The widely-used peer-to-peer payment app, which is embedded within 2,000 bank apps, encountered a glitch that left transactions paused and hoards of people feeling increasingly agitated on May 2, 2025. The problem is a leat over, with connections being restored.
The outage started Friday morning, and frustrated bank customers took to social media to complain about being unable to access bank websites or make mobile deposits at institutions like Bank of America, Truist and Chase, according to DownDetector, which logged more than 800 reports by midday. Users reported running into payments stuck in “pending” status, unable to complete cash transfers to cover rent and bills. Zelle blamed the issue on a third-party vendor, payments processor Fiserv, but the details are as yet unclear — Fiserv had not commented at publishing time.
For many, the timing could not have been worse — early May is peak season for monthly payments. “My rent’s been in limbo since yesterday,” a Truist user vented on DownDetector. The bank, Bank of America, acknowledged the delays, and said it was working with vendors to correct the issue. By late Friday, reports of outages had fallen, suggesting that life had returned to normal.
The Zelle outage tapped into mounting anxiety about the reliability of the banking system, as people complained about the disruption on social media and the terms “Zelle down” and “is Zelle down” began trending. The platform, which handled over $1 trillion in payments last year, is a lifeline for fast-moving transfers, so disruptions are deeply felt. Unlike competitors Venmo and Cash App, which are operated by PayPal and Square, Zelle funnels transactions directly from one bank account to another, magnifying its presence — and its susceptibility.
As services come back online, experts advise people to double check pending transactions and, if problems remain, contact their banks. “Outages like this really point to the fact that we’ve become so reliant on digital payments,” said Tara Monroe, a financial analyst. “It’s a wakeup call for back-up plans.”
Zelle’s return is good news, though some questions linger about what went wrong and how to prevent future hiccups —for Zelle and other peer-to-peer payment systems — from occurring. For the time being, customers can breathe a little easier as their money starts to move once more.
Source: CNN, “Zelle is not working for some bank customers,” May 2, 2025
Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available data as of May 03, 2025. FinanceTract is not affiliated with Zelle, Fiserv, or CNN.
