this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026
115 points (99.1% liked)
Technology
86649 readers
2914 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Why's that?
I don't know big American banks to be very consumer friendly, and
This part tells me that your individual bank probably isn't a huge fan of it, and there's no guarantee that it won't change in the future. And finally,
If there is a problem with the service, I'm not sure how helpful Zelle would be in fixing it.
They're not supposed to be. The thing is, in this case, the consumers' interest is aligned with the banks, and against companies like PayPal/Venmo, Cash App, Patreon, credit card companies, and a hundred other payment processors who are all trying to take a relatively large portion of the transaction simply because they can.
It was created by the banks, so yes, they definitely are.
Zelle functions like cash, ACH, or wire transfer. Similarly, it has no protections like cash. There is no intermediary, which means no one to collect fees, but also no one to protect you in the case that you mistakenly give your money to the wrong person. It's up to you to ensure that you're sending your money to the right place.
@artyom as someone who is trying hard to build a better way to support people. The payment processor math (Stripe) is absolutely brutal. I wanted a much lower overhead than I ended up with, but most of what I do have, I never see!
It’s important to me to not try and mask this stuff as an extra charge or fee and keep things transparent as possible. I wish there was a better way.
Sorry, I don't understand what you're trying to say. Stripe "math" is brutal? What does that mean?
Zelle has no overhead and no extra charges or fees, its completely free. That's why I recommend it.
@artyom Stripe, the payment processor that most of these platforms (including https://slowcl.app/) use charges both percent and flat fee on every transaction, and depending on how you set up your payout model, more on payouts. Zelle can’t be used to replace it unfortunately.
Yes, I understand Stripe bad. Why can't Zelle replace it?
@artyom Zelle can’t be used for commercial platforms, has no ability to split income, and has no API. It’s really only good for direct bank to bank transfers.
Why do you need a "commercial platform"? I feel like it's important to consider the context here (Patreon) where you're transferring money to creators who have already provided a service. This doesn't require an API. Bank to bank transfers is all that's required. You can split income after the funds are received.
@artyom Are you saying that creators should drop patronage platforms entirely and just request direct transfers from Zelle?
Because any patronage platform is commercial and wouldn’t be able to use Zelle. Zelle also can’t support recurring billing so subscriptions wouldn’t work.
If you’re saying creators should drop patronage platforms entirely, there’s an argument for that, but I think it would introduce a lot of other issues at any decent scale.
Correct
It actually can.
I don't see any "other issues" that could possibly be bigger than the existing ones.