Wells Fargo had announced some time ago that it would be upgrading its ATMs to allow for cardless access to its ATMs. As CBS reported, the launch is happening in a big way:
Wells Fargo plans to upgrade all 13,000 of its ATMs next week to allow customers to access their funds using their cellphones instead of traditional bank cards.
The announcement was made by Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan on Tuesday at an employee town hall in Orlando.
Financial institutions are rolling out this technology in a variety of ways; Wells has chosen to use one-time passwords (OTP) to authenticate the users:
To access their money, customers would get unique eight-digit codes from their Wells Fargo smartphone app, and enter the code into the ATM along with their PIN number. The machines will still accept debit cards as well.
While using an OTP and a typical card PIN is also required, this doesn’t seem like much of an advantage, but Wells is taking a two-step approach and will be rolling out an NFC solution later:
Wells said it plans to roll out another upgrade to its ATMs later this year, which will allow customers to access the ATMs by holding their smartphones up to a reader on the machine, instead of entering the eight-digit code. It would be similar to using Apple Pay or Samsung Pay, the bank said.
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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