There’s no doubt that digital banks and payment services and the future, and it’s impossible to list apps in that category without listing Chime and Zelle. Both of these digital payment services seem to have a set of features that will work well together if only there’s a way to consolidate them.
However, trying to answer the question: “does Chime have Zelle?” is pretty difficult without understanding what you mean by that. In some cases, it may be talking about funding an account with the other, and in most cases, it’s usually about sending money across the two services.
In this article, I’ll analyze Zelle and Chime and let you know if you can link one to the other. You’ll also learn the possible ways to use Chime with Zelle if at all that’s possible. Without further ado, let’s get started.
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What’s Chime?
Chime describes itself as a financial technology company that offers numerous banking services to its customers. It offers you a single checking account, a savings account, and a secured credit card within the app where you can carry out all the activities.
The app partners with Bancorp Bank to offer banking services, the same bank that issues the PayPal Prepaid MasterCard. Other banks that facilitate the banking services on Chime include Stride Bank and Members FDIC.
If you’re looking for an alternative to your bank that you can use online, Chime is a decent option. It’s also worth noting that the app offers a Visa debit card that you can use for transactions at pretty much any ATM or store at this point, in addition to the secured credit card I mentioned earlier.
What’s Zelle?
Zelle is not a standalone service; it’s a digital payments system owned and managed by several banks in the United States. The banks that jointly own Zelle include Wells Fargo, Bank of America, U.S. Bank, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, and Truist Financial Corporation.
Launched to the public in 2017, the service was introduced to make interpersonal and small business payments faster and cheaper, or better put, free. You can start using Zelle by signing up through the Zelle app or by selecting from your bank’s mobile banking app.
There’s not much to Zelle, except that it facilitates quick payments between supported banks. Now, back to the big question: is Chime one of the supported banks? Can you use Zelle with Chime? The following sections will answer your questions satisfactorily.
Does Chime Have Zelle?
Before continuing with answering this question, there are two crucial things I must point out. Firstly, Zelle works with banks alone. The native integration that Zelle offers requires you to have an account with one of the banks that it supports in its ecosystem.
The service supports almost every single bank and credit union in the United States, even the ones you don’t know exist. The official Zelle website keeps a huge list of the financial institutions that the service supports, and you can check it out from the “Get Started with Zelle” page.
Secondly, Chime is not a bank. While I’ve pointed this out a while earlier, it’s crucial to reemphasize it in case you jumped sections to the most important part. While Chime offers many banking services, it describes itself as a financial technology company, and not as a bank.
When you put two and two together in this instance, you’ll notice that there’s a very low chance that you can use Zelle with Chime, and you’d be right. At the moment, Chime doesn’t have Zelle integrated into the app because it’s legally not a bank.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s flat-out impossible to use Zelle if you use the services of Chime. Zelle offers an app that you can download, register, and use, without necessarily having an account with any of the supported banks.
When you sign up for an account that way, you can integrate your Chime account by adding its debit card to the Zelle app. That way, you’ve successfully worked around the restriction that makes it impossible to use Zelle with Chime, albeit you’ll be missing out on a whole lot of features.
In the following section, you’ll learn how to sign up for a Zelle account without a bank and link your Chime debit card afterward. Also, you’ll see some of the features you’ll be missing when you use this method.
How to Use Zelle With Chime
Unless you skipped your way to this section, you should already know how Zelle is expected to work with Chime. For those that skipped the other sections, the steps are simple: create a Zelle account without a bank (it’s possible) and add your Chime debit card afterward.
Without further ado, here are the steps required to use Zelle with Chime.
- Get the Zelle app
Since Chime doesn’t support Chime natively, you’ll have to download the full Zelle app to create an account. You can get the Zelle app from the Google Play Store for Android devices and there’s an iOS version of the app for iPhone users through the App Store.
- Create a free account (without a bank)
After installing the app, you can go ahead and create an account with the service. You’ll be required to input very basic details like your name, and email address; all the basics that you’ll need to sign up for a service like Zelle minus the sensitive data.
At one point, Zelle will prompt you to select your bank. There’s a humongous list of banks, so many that you’ll need the search bar to find your bank. However, there’s one name that you won’t find in this list, regardless of how hard you search, and that name is Chime.
Fortunately, you don’t need to select a bank. Go ahead and search for Chime anyway. The app will return a message notifying you that there are no name matches; go ahead and tap on the “DON’T SEE YOUR BANK” button to continue creating an account without a bank.
- Add your Chime debit card to your account
After selecting that you can’t find your account, you should be able to continue with the rest of the steps as usual. However, you’ll be required to add a debit card; you just have to fund your Zelle account somehow, don’t you think?
At this point, find your Zelle debit card, enter the necessary details, and go through the necessary verification processes to add the card to your account. If you don’t have a debit card from Zelle, you can get one from within the app by ordering it.
After adding the debit card, you can continue with the process of creating your Zelle account. Instead of having a linked bank account, however, all you’ll have is a linked debit card, and as you may already expect, it limits the pool of features that you can access with Chime.
Are Zelle Transfers Fast with Chime
If you’ve been following this article carefully, you should know that you can only access the full library of Zelle features. Since one of Zelle’s most important features is instant money transfers, you may want to ask: does Chime use Zelle to speed up transfers?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t, and that boils down to Chime not supporting the Zelle service natively. If you use one of the supported banks, you should be able to transfer money to others in the Zelle network instantly, but Chime is not in the Zelle network.
Also, instant transfers aren’t the only feature that isn’t available to Chime users with Zelle. For money transfers, there’s a $500 weekly transfer limit for users that created their accounts without a bank. If you used one of the supported bank accounts while creating your Zelle account, you won’t have to put up with such a low limit, but the banks all have their limits.
MORE ON ZELLE:
Does Woodforest Bank Use Zelle? Yes, See How I Transfer
Can I Send Money From Zelle To Paypal? See How
Zelle Not Working With Chime (What To Do?)
Why is My Zelle Account Permanently Locked?
Wells Fargo Zelle Limit – How To Increase Transaction Limit
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Conclusion
If you have a Chime account, you may be asking: can you use Zelle with Chime to get the associated benefits? Well, it depends on what you want to do with Zelle exactly. The most correct answer, however, is that Chime doesn’t support Zelle natively.
You can still go ahead and create a Zelle account without adding your bank. The service will offer you an option to add your debit card, which you can use to receive payments from other Zelle users. If you were expecting instant and limitless money transfers, I’m afraid to say you’re not going to get that with Chime.