Did my bank text me a Zelle fraud alert?

How to spot the Zelle scam

• You are told to send a Zelle payment to reverse or cancel one. Payments do not undo payments. This single instruction is the scam, and nothing else about the call needs examining once you hear it.
• The text wants a reply first, usually YES or NO. Either answer proves the number is live and hands the caller an opening: you have just told them you are paying attention.
• The call arrives within minutes of your reply, from the "fraud department". The timing is the point, and caller ID showing the bank proves nothing because it is trivially spoofed.
• You are asked to move money to a "safe", "protected" or "holding" account. Banks do not relocate your money to keep it safe; your account already is the safe account.
• They ask for your online banking password, or trigger a password-reset text and ask you to read the code back. The code is the reset. Reading it out hands over the account.
• The transfer they describe is one you cannot place, for an amount just large enough to frighten you into acting before checking.
• You are kept on the line while you do it, and discouraged from ringing the bank separately. Isolation is deliberate.

What to do now

1. Do not reply to the text, and hang up on the call. Then ring the bank yourself on the number printed on your card, which is the only number in this situation that you can trust.
2. Never send a Zelle payment to cancel a Zelle payment, whoever asks and however urgent it sounds.
3. Check the account in the bank's own app, opened from your home screen. A genuine flagged transfer appears there.
4. Report it to your bank or credit union first, not to Zelle. Zelle runs through them and they decide reimbursement. Zelle distinguishes fraud, an unauthorised payment, which typically qualifies, from a scam, where you were persuaded to send it, and says certain impostor scams also qualify.
5. Zelle's own support line is 1-844-428-8542, open 8am to 10pm ET, seven days a week.
6. Write down the exact times, the calling number and what you were told, then file at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and ic3.gov. A disputed-transfer investigation runs on that record, and both agencies are where Zelle directs people.