Contents

Overview

What is Zelle?

Zelle is a peer-to-peer money transfer app that allows individuals to send and receive money within minutes.  Users access Zelle through their banking institution's banking app or online banking site.   User accounts are associated with a phone numbers, which allows other users to easily find the person they wish to send money to. Unlike other money transfer apps, Zelle does not charge a fee for an instant transfer.  More than 1700 banks include Zelle in their banking app.

Zelle claims are on the rise.  Due to the popularity of the app, fraudsters have devised new scams to lure users into sending them money.  Unlike payment cards, Zelle does not currently provide complete liability protection to it's users.  In addition to the rise in fraud scams, many merchants are opting to accept Zelle as a payment method for goods or services to make it easier for consumers to do business with them.  The increase in re-sale activity, thanks to apps like OfferUp, has also led to a significant rise in peer-to-per transfers, and fraud claims.

QFD includes support for end-to-end Zelle dispute processing and provides many features to help mitigate losses for financial institutions and improve customer experience.  Continue reading to understand how QFD supports Zelle disputes.

Configuration

QFD includes various options for customizing the behavior of the application.  The following settings are applicable to Zelle claims.

For additional configuration settings that are not specific to Zelle, see Configuration Portal.

Supported Functions

Collect

The collect stage is generally referred to as “intake”. This is where the case is created and information is collected from the claimant in order to provide all the details that are necessary to investigate the claim. Rules are evaluated as the user navigates through the collection process so that content is based on the context of the case.  This is invisible to the user and developed in such a way that the user need not understand the underlying rules or have detailed knowledge of the claims process.  To see the process in action, check out a short video demonstration.

Dispute Reasons & Supported Transactions

The following dispute reasons are applicable.  See Dispute Reason or Dispute Transactions for more details about these steps.

Required Documentation

There are currently no required documents for Zelle claims.

Enhance

The Enhance stage is the first fulfillment ("back-office") stage and provides steps for collecting additional information that is needed to support the investigation and processing of the claim.  The information that was gathered in the Collect stage is stored so it can be viewed later.  Once this happens, the system completes the initialization process and transmits the confirmation letter.  Typically, this will happen within seconds, well before a fulfillment user ever opens a claim.  The following steps are executed, where applicable, usually automatically.

For more information, see Enhance.

Authorizations

QFD supports the ability to include pending transactions in a claim.  When pending transactions are included in a claim, QFD will check for new postings every 6 hours.  When new postings are available, QFD will evaluate them and attempt to make an automatic match.

For more information, see Authorizations.

Enrichment

When available, QFD will retrieve additional details about a disputed transaction from the system of record.

For more information, see Enrichment.

Analyze

The Analyze stage is where decisions are made.  This is where back-office users will spend the majority of their time reviewing case details and making decisions that have not already been automated by QFD.  The following steps are executed, where applicable. 

For more information, see Analyze.

Collaboration

QFD supports collaboration with card merchants via Ethoca and Verifi networks.  These integrations allow issuers to attempt recovery from the merchant before initiating a chargeback with the card association.  Merchant collaboration currently only supports card transactions.

For more information, see Collaboration.

Merchant Credits

QFD provides automated merchant credit check algorithms to support quick and automatic dispute resolution.  This feature is available for ACH, BillPay, Card, and Zelle transactions.

For more information, see Merchant Credits.

Provisional Credit

For more information, see Provisional Credit.

Investigation

QFD provides several options for automating Provisional Credit based on various risk factors and documentation requirements.  When risk factors are present, or the amount of the claim exceeds configurable thresholds, the decision is left to a user.  Additionally, QFD will ensure that provisional credit is issued in accordance with applicable regulatory requirements, if not already issued prior to the required date.

For more information, see Investigation.

Fees

For more information, see Fees.

Interest

For more details, see Interest Calculation

Disposition

The Disposition step is where a determination is made about how the dispute will be resolved.  If automated recovery is enabled and the dispute has not been reasserted, the system will attempt to automatically apply a recovery option and execute Recovery.  Otherwise, a user will be prompted to determine the best recovery option.  If no recovery options are available, the Final Investigation Flow flow is executed.  Various options are available for applying automated decisioning at this step to reduce overhead.

For more details, see Disposition.

Responses

For more details, see Responses.

Approvals

This optional extension provides added control in your fulfillment process by requiring an escalated review of key, manual decision points.  Approvals can be enabled, with configurable thresholds, for the following user decisions: Deny, Provisional Credit, and Write Off.  When an approval flow is enabled, the decision that requires approval is suspended until a manager completes the review assignment.  The manager can approve the decision and the flow resumes, or they can decline the decision, provide an explanation, and the flow returns to the previous decision assignment.

For more details, see Approvals.

Execute

The Execute stage is where processing and maintenance happens. When information collected in Collect and Enhance or decisions made in Analyze trigger new processing or maintenance requirements, flows are executed in Execute and assignments are generated to get the work done.  All Execute tasks can be automated by QFD.  The following steps are executed, where applicable. 

For more details, see Execute.

Recovery

The recovery process is built around recovery strategies and recovery options.  A recovery option is a specific method that is available for recovering funds for a specific transaction type and dispute scenario.  A recovery strategy is a group of related recovery options.  For example, Visa Fraud is a recovery strategy and includes a recovery option that aligns to each of the fraud reason codes that Visa provides for issuer chargebacks.  A single dispute may have recovery rights under more than one recovery option, but it's unlikely that more than one recovery strategy would apply to a single claim.  The system will automatically evaluate dispute details to determine which recovery strategy and, within that strategy, which recovery option is most appropriate.  In some cases, a user may be required to determine an appropriate recovery option or review then one selected by the system.  

The following recovery options are available for Zelle.

For more details, see Recovery.

Accounting

QFD performs general accounting operations required for claims processing. The system can be integrated with most real-time accounting service interfaces or support batch accounting file generation and delivery. When no services are available, these operations are performed by a user.  Specific accounting rules can be configured for each transaction type and adjustment type to ensure all accountholder and GL to GL accounting needs are supported.  Additionally, QFD performs account balancing to ensure that all require accounting is performed on-time.

For more details, see Accounting.

Account Maintenance

When any type of maintenance is required, such as account blocks or stand-in file listing, these tasks are executed in the Account Maintenance step.  All maintenance tasks can be automated by QFD.

There are no Account Maintenance tasks that are specific to Zelle.

For more details, see Account Maintenance.

Fraud Reporting

For most card networks, fraud reporting must be completed before a fraud chargeback can be submitted.  The system facilitates automatic fraud reporting via direct integration with popular card networks.  This step is only applicable to credit and debit card claims.

For more details, see Fraud Reporting.

Notifications

QFD includes pre-defined correspondence for all supported claim functions and supports multiple channels for correspondence with customers.  Each channel uses a formatting template that simplifies the design process by applying the template to all communications in that channel and allowing the content to be managed independently of branding.  Content rules determine what is included in each letter, regardless of channel (though some content is channel-aware).  Notifications are automatically generated, based on regulatory requirements and configurable settings.

The following letters are all applicable to Zelle disputes.

For more details, see Correspondence

Resolve

The Resolve stage is the final stage in the fulfillment process. When a dispute is paid or denied, it enters this flow and triggers final resolution activities.

For more details, see Resolve.

Paid

A dispute is paid when the accountholder's claim is found to be valid.  In many cases, claims and disputes are automatically paid by QFD.  A claim or dispute can be resolved as 'Paid' via the following methods:

• A user determines that the claim or dispute is valid and decides to issue a final credit  (Manual)
• The claim meets the requirements defined for AutoPay  (Automatic)
• A dispute is fully recovered  (Automatic)
• No final decision has been made and an applicable regulatory resolution date is reached  (Automatic)

When a pay decision is made, by a user or the system, a Paid letter is generated and any accounting adjustments are executed by QFD.

For more details, see Paid.

Denied

Denying a dispute can be achieved via several different methods within QFD, depending on where the dispute is at in the case lifecycle.  Most commonly, this will happen in Final Investigation or during a review assignment in Recovery.  This action triggers several systematic checks and balances to ensure that all required resolution activities are complete, such as customer notification and accounting.

The following deny reasons are applicable to Zelle disputes.  Some deny reasons can be disabled via Config.

• Page:
  Duplicate Dispute
• Page:
  Merchant Issued Credit
• Page:
  No Error
• Page:
  Not Posted
• Page:
  Out of Timeframe Deny
• Page:
  Withdrawn

For more details, see Denied.