According to her, banks aren’t making victims of Zelle scams whole.
“Overall, the three banks that provided complete data sets reported 35,848 cases of scams, involving over $25.9 million of payments in 2021 and the first half of 2022,” the report summarized. “In the vast majority of these cases, the banks did not repay the customers that reported being scammed. Overall these three banks reported repaying customers in only 3,473 cases (representing nearly 10% of scam claims) and repaid only $2.9 million.”
My checking account at Wells Fargo bank seems to have Zelle activated. I tried to refuse it on the website but could not. I then called them and told the CSR to delete it but it’s still there. I of course do not install the app on my phone but it’s still out there waiting to be exploited by a scammer. The bank must make a lot of money on the app.
Your best bet is to make sure your phone number and email address are up to date. Wells fargo sends a text and email as soon as a zelle recipient is added to your account. Go into the zelle menu on the wells fargo webpage and make sure there are no recipients listed there.
This won’t stop a fraudster from getting access to your wells fargo account and adding himself as a recipient, but it will make it easier for you to catch. There SHOULD be a step in between the fraudster attempting to send himself money and the money actually leaving your account where the bank confirms that you are the one actually sending the money. If you know that you aren’t using zelle ever, and you get any emails or texts related to money transfers at WF, you should immediately get on the phone with WF customer service and lock your account down. But if you already have 2 factor authentication setup for your WF login, the likelihood of this happening to you is quite slim.