We’re pleased to welcome Denise Leonhard to Early Warning as Zelle® general manager.
Denise brings two decades of leadership experience focused on using technology to make financial services more accessible to consumers and small businesses. Most recently, she served as general manager and chief commercial officer at Venmo. Prior to Venmo, she held senior leadership roles at PayPal and American Express.
In her role as general manager, Denise will continue to grow Zelle and ensure it remains the platform of choice for people to send money to those they know and trust. Zelle stays ahead of criminals with multi-layered security efforts and has proactively taken steps to go above legal requirements by providing reimbursement for fraud, and certain qualifying imposter scams. The countermeasures Zelle uses to stop fraud and scams are highly effective, as demonstrated by more than 99.95% of transactions being completed without any reports of fraud or scams in 2023.
Zelle is committed to educating consumers about the evolving risks of fraud and scams across the U.S. Zelle provides in-app safety messages and alerts to consumers during the payment initiation flow. In fact, 700 million of these alerts were sent in 2023 alone. In the same year, Zelle educated nearly 40 million consumers of all ages through our website and partnerships with the Better Business Bureau, National Council on Aging (NCOA), Utilities United Against Scams, and Vox Media (The Science Behind Scams and S.A.F.E. Squad) to help them identify and avoid potential scams.