A consortium of the largest US financial institutions is looking at freshening up their alternative to PayPal’s popular Venmo app.
Early Warning, the bank-backed entity that is running the US payment service, has come up with the name “Zelle”, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The service, which enables customers to send money from their bank accounts via mobile phones to accounts at other financial institutions, has been running for several years but without a distinctive brand.
The service is known as clearXchange, but that name was never promoted to consumers. Venmo, meanwhile, has taken off in a big way with users and proved valuable for PayPal.
The banks plan to unveil the new brand at an industry conference in October, although it is still possible it will change if any last-minute problems turn up.
It is also not clear how the US banks will incorporate the Zelle name into their existing portfolios. For instance, JP Morgan, one of the largest US financial institutions, already offers a P2P service called Chase QuickPay.
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