Bank of America: 1Q Zelle Volumes Surge 26% to $106 Billion

Bank of America’s first quarter results took note of continued use of digital channels in banking — and for payments, too.

The bank recorded 3.4 billion digital logins; digital sales represented 50% of total sales, the company noted in its earnings supplementals on Tuesday (April 16).

Digital households tallied by the banking firm came in at 748,000 in the quarter, at 86% of the installed base, up from 717,000 and 84% a year ago.

Zelle numbers showed increased use of P2P payments, as volumes gained about 26% year on year to $106 billion. The number of Zelle transactions sent far outpaced the number of checks sent in the quarter, at a respective 223 million and 100 million. In the latest quarter, there were nearly 22 million Zelle users, up from 19.6 million a year ago.

“This quarter, Zelle transactions has now passed the combined number of checks written, plus the amount of cash withdrawals from tellers and from ATMs,” CEO Brian Moynihan said during the earnings call.

More Card Accounts

In a sign of consumers’ continuing appetite for credit, the company said that it added more than one million credit card accounts in the quarter.

The materials also noted that the credit card loss rate in the latest quarter stood at 3.6% compared to about 3.1% at the end of 2023.

Moynihan noted on earnings call that “we continue to invest and enhance our digital platforms” and added that more than 90% of customer checking accounts are primary checking accounts in clients’ households.

Elsewhere, in terms of digital headway, Moynihan spotlighted that the company’s digital banking assistant, Erica, has reached a “key milestone” of more than 2 billion interactions since its introduction 6 years ago.

CFO Alastair Borthwick said on the call that “we’re encouraged by the trend of delinquencies because the late stage increases slowed and early stage delinquencies improved as well. And that leads us to believe we should begin to see consumer net charge-offs start to level out over the next quarter or so.”

During the question and answer session with analysts, Borthwick indicated that consumer deposit trends should stabilize in the back half of the year.

“Don’t expect a massive change in how the deposits are structured from what’s in the money markets, what’s in savings, what’s in checking,” he added, noting that tends have “been relatively stable.”

The company’s materials showed that in the latest quarter, average deposits of $952 billion decreased 7% from a year ago.