To better protect customers from fraud and scams, Chase will limit Zelle payments sent to recipients connected through social media. Specifically, starting on March 23, 2025, you will no longer be able to send Zelle payments to recipients you added through social media, online marketplaces, or messaging apps. When you make a Zelle payment, Chase may ask you why you are sending the payment and how you know the recipient. It may also block payments to contacts that originated from social media.
I think this is a good idea in principle, but it will be difficult to define and implement. One possible approach I can think of is to assign higher risk to Zelle accounts that receive a lot of incoming payments, making it harder for you to send money to them. Large payments could also go through an extra review step, and so on. In short, if you use Zelle after March 23, you may be asked to verify the payment. If the money is especially urgent, you may want to use another method instead, such as PayPal or Venmo.
For more about Zelle and how to use it, see:
