Wells Fargo: All ATMs Will Take Phone Codes, Not Just Cards (go.com)

Given the prevalence of smartphones nowadays, Wells Fargo has announced plans to upgrade all 13,000 of its ATMs next week to allow customers to access their money using their cellphones instead of traditional bank cards. Wells Fargo would be the first to upgrade all of its ATMs with the feature across the United States. ABC News reports: 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. One limitation of the one-time code, though, is that it won't work on the secure doors that many branches have for non-business hours that require a customer to swipe an ATM or debit card to gain entry. Wells Fargo said those secure doors are found at a small percentage of branches, mostly in major metropolitan areas like New York City or Chicago. 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.

Comments

Wells Fargo

[DogDude]

I wouldn't trust Wells Fargo any further than I could throw any of their crooked executives. Even if my credit unions offered this, I wouldn't link my cell phone to my banking info. That seems like an extremely bad idea.

Re:Wells Fargo

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't trust Wells Fargo any further than I could throw any of their crooked executives. Even if my credit unions offered this, I wouldn't link my cell phone to my banking info. That seems like an extremely bad idea.

It will probably also require a $9.99 monthly 'service charge', and automatically deduct a $1.99 "teller fee" each time you use it.

Re: Wells Fargo

[nehumanuscrede]

Right there with you man.

There is exactly zero chance I will put anything from my bank accounts within reach of a Smartphone. Ever. For any reason.

I will not login to a banking site with one and will never trust the banking apps nor the overall security of the phone to ever even consider it.

As someone that's been waiting over 5 years for...

[Anonymous Coward]

an ATM card, this is just crap. They can't get working ATM cards to their customers, like myself that has had an account for just over forty years, so why add technology and complexity before fixing their basic problems?

Card Skimmers?

[irrational_design]

This sounds like a solution to the card skimmer problem.

Re:Card Skimmers?

[TWX]

If they wanted to solve the card-skimmer problem then they'd install circuitry to detect a skimmer placed on the cardslot and they'd show a picture on the ATM screen of what the cardslot should look like. They could even go so far as to make a device that slips out through the cardslot and damages or destroys card skimmers, deploying it between however many uses of the ATM, or they could use a system that retracts the card reader and cardslot into the housing of the machine between uses and allows for automatic inspection and confiscation of skimmer mechanisms.

There are plenty of ways to solve the skimmer problem without resorting to using cell phones and pushing the security responsibility to the accountholder, but they all require effort and money.

Re:Card Skimmers?

[Rick Schumann]

Two ways they could solve the 'card skimmer' problem:
1. Train bank employees that service the ATM to look for and recognize card skimmers. I'm surprised if they don't already do this. ATMs have to be reloaded with money, have jams cleared, etc, on a regular basis. If bank employees aren't routinely looking for these, then there's something seriously wrong with their procedures.
2. Install software on the ATM itself that scans Bluetooth for card skimmers, and SHUT DOWN if it detects one. I can't see it being too difficult to create software that would do this. Law Enforcement must have boxes full of the things, determine what devices they show up as, what protocol they use for transfer of captured data, and write a program that looks for the device and verifies it's a card skimmer. It finds one, it tells the ATM to shut itself down until a bank employee and police can come by to remove the thing.

Re:Card Skimmers?

[TWX]

Bank employees aren't usually the ones servicing the ATMs, there are crews that drive around and do that, usually with names like BRINKS on the side of the truck. As far as I am aware, the local bank employees have no access into the ATMs.

You probably wouldn't want your average teller to have access to the ATM anyway, tellers make terrible money compared to the standards to which they're held. They have all of the downsides of having to maintain some of the highest standards of grooming of any workplace (arguably to the point of "preening") but they make less than your average computer PC desktop support tech.

Re:Card Skimmers?

[Rick Schumann]

You and another commentor in this thread are ignorning the point: Banks SHOULD have someone auditing their ATM machines, daily, if not several times daily, to ensure there are no unauthorized devices attached to their ATM machines. There is no excuse for not doing it. If Brinks or some other company is who is serving the machines then THEY need to be trained to do this, plain and simple. Laziness is not an excuse, it's part of the problem.

Re: As someone that's been waiting over 5 years f

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, the purchase wasn't finalized until Oct 15, 2011 so we've only been waiting on working ATM cards for a little over five years.

Secure Doors

[xaosflux]

Almost all of the "secure door" readers are actually very dumb, and will let basically any card with any kind of account number on the mag stripe open the door. I've opened them with gift cards and rewards cards. The doors are not normally networked to any sort of identification system. They are usually tied to a motion sensor and will not not open if someone is still in the enclosure, and will record the stripe data that is presented to them.

Re:Secure Doors

[Anonymous Coward]

I can confirm this. I've even used my NYC metro-card to open a door.

They're not the first.

[tmshort]

Bank of America already offers this

http://promo.bankofamerica.com...

Re:They're not the first.

[ginoledesma]

I've found this pretty useful. The person ahead of me had their card swallowed for whatever reason (maybe incorrect PIN entered one too many times), so using the contactless method was a relief.

One limitation I've found is that Bank of America has restricted this to withdrawals only. To deposit cash or checks, you'd have to insert your ATM card still.

Surprised it took So long

[Anonymous Coward]

In Poland it is available since 2015.

NÃw probably over 90% of ATMs and 75% of account owners can use the feature.

It is called BLIK.

You can albo use ot at majority of stores , largest online Exchange as wellness as at Aliexpress

Commonwealth Bank of Australia has had Cardless ca

[feebz]

Although I can only use my banks ATM for Cardless cash, there are ATMs available almost all the time. It's the only way I will withdraw cash (though there was once a month or 2 ago where I was forced till use card) cant be skimmed. There have been many times where I forgot my wallet but almost never my phone. A most excellent advancement in tech.

Note to muggers

[ThatsNotPudding]

Try not to get too much blood on the victims' phone; it will degrade the signal.

LOL wow.

[Highdude702]

So if I have control over your phone, I can tell the app, without you knowing to give me a code. While standing at an atm, and withdraw your money.. HAHA have you guys seen the security on cell phones lately?

No phone, no cash?

[Zemran]

As long as the old system continues to work it will be fine but if this is made standard I would have to find a different bank as I am not going to go back to using a smart phone. I rely on my phone too much to endure the ridiculously short battery life on smart phones so I would be forced to choose between my work and the ATM system.

Don't forget Wells Fargo's criminal behavior

[Required Snark]

Wells Fargo is in a steep decline right now due to it's recent credit card scandal. They were caught pressuring clients to get too many credit cards and even opening fraudulent account without customer's consent. Besides big financial penalties their new credit card applications are down %55.

So take this with a grain of salt. It is part of a new advertising push to help shore up their image and recover from their self imposed failure. It's not about innovation as much as it is about trying to erase the past.

So

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

So, instead of popping in a card and 4 digit pin, I have to fumble around with an app then punch in a clumsy, 8-digit ramdom code I will have to mentally triple-check?

Might I suggest "The Inmates Are Running The Asylum"?

To borrow from the book, bank card + computer = computer

Been around in South Africa for almost a decade

[NakNak]

Sometimes we forget how medieval the US banking system is. Then something like this comes around.

Every major bank in South Africa has offered cardless ATM services for so long I can't even say for sure when the last one came online. But the first seems to have been by 2008 at the latest.

I use it at least once a month to pay a casual worker who has no bank account. It has also saved my bacon when I forgot my wallet (but not cellphone with banking app) at home. And I've employed it twice when I suspected card skimmers had been attached to the ATM I wanted to use.

Never had any hassle with it. Never heard of any either.