[ISO-morphism]

In the US, Zelle vs. Venmo is comparable to debit card vs. credit card. With Zelle/debit, you're basically mailing cash - it might get lost in transit, your money is gone right away. With Venmo/credit, there's a middleman with a big pile of cash that assumes the risk of money being in-flight, and usually eats fraud/errors as a cost of doing business in exchange for selling data about your spending to advertisers.

[isanengineer]

This exactly. And this is the reason that Venmo or Paypal need to charge fees for commercial transactions, because they're providing a service. What bugs me is that Zelle seems to be marketed as equivalent to those other digital payment platforms, but in reality it's very different.