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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.
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.
I don't respond to AC's.
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.
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.
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Bank of America already offers this
http://promo.bankofamerica.com...
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?