Last week, Pay Pal announced earnings and also some growth numbers around its P2P service, Venmo. Yesterday, Early Warning announced numbers for Zelle:
The latest figures represent a year-over-year growth rate of 67% in payment value and 83% in transactions. From the second quarter, volume grew 13% and transactions 16%. Over the past 12 months, bank-controlled Zelle says it has processed $106 billion on 375 million transactions.
What isn’t disclosed is what other notable P2P providers might be doing such as how much person-to-person volume is flowing across Pay Pal’s namesake accounts, Square Cash, or what is still being conducted through financial institutions using processor provided Popmoney and PeoplePay. Although Venmo and Zelle don’t represent the entire market, as indicators, they suggest the market is still growing rapidly. Below is a chart of this year’s reported dollar value growth.
Combined, Pay Pal and Early Warning have transacted over $128 Billion so far this year, much of that as a cash or check replacement. Pay Pal doesn’t release the number of transactions, but Early Warning does, and what we see there is that transactions are increasing faster than dollar volumes. I would consider that a good thing. The average Zelle transaction has declined from $294 to $276 from just 1st to 3rd quarter this year. This means that consumers are using this for more every day casual transactions and not just for splitting rent of making account to account transfers.
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit and Alternative Products Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group