The past several transactions I've done with Zelle, it has taken 3-5 days for the money to arrive. This was with a contact I sent money to before using Zelle (my brother), and also a new contact. I'm surprised because my experience has always been Zelle was instant. Has something changed with Zelle? The bank I am using is Ally.
Nothing's changed with Zelle AFAIK, but the time it takes depends on the sending bank, the receiving bank, the amount of money, the history of both parties, arbitrary fraud metrics decided by both banks and EWS themselves and some other things. Sometimes they just decide that your transfer won't be instant.
I mistakenly opened a Bank of America account last year, but they had so many fraud protections on Zelle it was nearly impossible to use without constantly getting transfers held up for days and having to make phone calls to banking support to approve transactions and verify my identity, and it was such an absolute nightmare I will never ever bank with them again or recommend them to anybody. The worst part was absolutely the phone calls, I could never dismiss or approve anything online I always had to make a phone call during business hours.
Then I moved to US Bank and they support instant Zelle transfers, recurring Zelle transfers (which both my credit union and Capital One didn't support!), approving fraud alerts online and more, the only way I could be happier with them is if they had less security theater (like Mercury) but I'll be moving to Mercury anyway once they support Zelle.
