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I have sold digital goods to a unknown person. They have sent me a Zelle transfer to my Bank of America account of 2,000. The money has been credited to my account and has became available. Although this is true, it has remained as "processing" until the next business day.

Is there any way a bad person on the other end can cancel the processing money? or (as i am aware) does the money leaves their account when they send it and immediately lose it.

I want to be sure the transfer has cleared before selling more digital goods to them.

TrevorKS
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4 Answers4

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After collecting information via web searching, the comments above, and an additional call to BOA, I have concluded the following to the best of my knowledge.

Zelle Transfers are final. Irreversible.

As Jay mentioned above, funds are subtracted from the sending account before the transfer is made, therefore it eliminates sending funds that do not exist. I validated this information with BOA, and the BOA representative said that once a Zelle transfer is initiated and the receiving party has received the funds, it can no longer be canceled. Funds received by the receiving party is credited immediately.

I will note that the BOA representative was a BOA representative and not a Zelle representative. I say this because the representatives seemed to be slightly weary in answering my questions about Zelle, as if he was looking up the information as we spoke.

If someone is reading this and plans to transfer a huge amount of cash from a highly likely malicious user, I would recommend contacting Zelle or your personal bank directly to further validate this information. Zelle, from what I can find, is a fairly new technology. I could not find a Zelle contact number via the web for questioning, so I can only rely on the knowledge on my BOA representative.

Adding in additional information with new sources from comment below.

As long as both parties are previously enrolled, it is instant and irreversible. This can now be confirmed with direct cites: Can I Cancel a Payment and User Service Agreement (section 11 last paragraph) However If you have not properly registered your email or phone number ahead of time, you run the risk that they cancel the transfer before you complete enrollment. --emkman

TripeHound
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TrevorKS
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Posting this as a rebuttal to OP's self-answer.

  1. Zelle's FAQ states you cannot cancel a payment, which is true because of the instant transfer. The BOA rep basically said the same thing. But that is different from reversing a payment, which would occur after a payment is cleared. Zelle never states that a payment can be reversed under no circumstances.

  2. The cited User Service Agreement (paragraph 11) basically relieves Zelle and Bank of any liability from the payment. In other words, they don't have the responsibility to reverse payments in a fraud situation, but it doesn't say they can't.

  3. Another answer here, as well as some reddit posts (google "Zelle chargeback" or other similar keywords) seem to suggest reversals do happen. As long as one of them can be confirmed, the answer to OP's question should be yes, despite what Zelle says on its website, or what 99% of the people have experienced so far. You are talking about tail risks after all.

xiaomy
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I can tell you the by personal experience that Zelle payments are not final as I sell digital goods online and recently had four bank accounts closed under fraud due to Zelle funds chargebacks. This system is prone to scams just like any other online payments platform like Venmo, PayPal, Serve, etc.

These banks always have to "protect" the "victims" even though these are the scammers themselves. Go figure. No protection for vendors at all. Only for buyers.

Brythan
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Clay Carlos A
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If the funds have indeed been made available for withdrawal then it is a done deal. Banks do not readily expose themselves to double dealing so I think the money is safely "settled" from the other institution once it is made available to you. I prefer Zelle for that reason. With Paypal and Venmo the funds can be gotten back at any time. Paypal and Venmo are not banking institutions and don't enjoy some of the privileges of Zelle and the banks that back Zelle.

Frank Pressly
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