If you were duped into sending money to a scammer via Zelle, a refund may be in the works, thanks to pressure from regulators.
As Reuters reports, the 2,100 banks that use payment service Zelle have started issuing refunds to victims. But they only did so after lawmakers and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) stepped in following a 2022 New York Times investigation that found fraudsters were using the app to impersonate bank employees to scam people out of their money.
Refunds have been going out since June 30, but Zelle hasn't publicly announced the effort to avoid having scammers take advantage of that, too, Reuters says.
Thus far, Zelle has only referred to a "new consumer reimbursement benefit for specific scam types" in an Aug. 30 statement. It also said banks and credit unions can use Risk Insights for Zelle, a free service that "gives institutions recipient risk attributes to assess potentially high-risk transactions and ultimately reduce fraud and scams."
Banks are required to cover loss of funds that result from unauthorized transfers, but they don't technically have to do anything if the customer sent the money themselves, even if it was a scam. As Zelle says in its explanation of fraud versus scam, "Because you authorized the payment, you may not be able to get your money back."
That didn't sit well with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who wrote to Zelle parent company Early Warning Services a year ago to say her office had discovered that "banks are not repaying the vast majority of cases where customers were fraudulently induced into making payments on Zelle."
In 2021 and the first half of 2022, four banks reported 192,878 cases where customers reported being fraudulently induced into making payments on Zelle, Sen. Warren said at the time. They lost $213.8 million, but banks repaid less than 10% of these claims, she said. Banks have argued that refunds would encourage more fraud and cost them billions, Reuters notes.
Sen. Warren today championed the refunds as "long overdue" and urged the CFPB to "keep up the pressure on the Big Banks and hold them accountable for scams on Zelle."
