It was rebranded, but the functionality existed before, at least if you were transferring between the big banks.

> In April 2011, the clearXchange service was launched. It was originally owned and operated by Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.[6][7] The service offered person-to-person (P2P), business-to-consumer (B2C), and government-to-consumer (G2C) payments.[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle_(payment_service)

Chase’s version was called QuickPay and was rebranded to Zelle around that time. Until its rebranding it was only available to transfer between two Chase accounts if I remember correctly. I used it to pay rent from 2014 to 2017.

Freaking hilarious. It astounds me how advanced, yet also archaic the US is.