SAN FRANCISCO _ Wells Fargo on Monday began to offer card-free ATM access through a coast-to-coast rollout of changes in how people can access the ubiquitous machines.
Instead of a physical card, customers will be able to use their mobile Wells Fargo app to choose card-free ATM access and then obtain a one-time token for that session to conduct transactions at the machine.
"We believe the future is cardless, and the launch of One-Time Access Code provides our 20 million mobile banking customers another convenient way to manage money," said Brett Pitts, Well Fargo's head of digital for virtual channels.
The bank wants to create more ways to conduct the same transaction over multiple platforms. The new technology is available at all 13,000 Wells Fargo ATM devices.
"We are not saying the card is obsolete," said Lauren Terreros, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo. "We are doing this to provide another convenient option for customers wherever they are."
Here's how it works: First, people can install Wells Fargo's mobile app on their smartphone and log into the app. Then, they can navigate to account services and choose card-free ATM access. At that point, they can request the eight-digit one-time-use token. After arriving at an ATM machine, people can enter the token and then their ATM personal identification number.
"If the customer walks out of the house and forgets their wallet, they may have their smartphone with them," Terreros said. "We want to offer our customers a mix of interconnected channels. That's how we truly feel we can be our customer's bank of choice."
Boston-based Forrester, a market research firm, has urged bank executives to design better pathways and experiences for customers who use multiple channels _ such as branch visits, web-based account access, or mobile apps _ to conduct banking transactions.
"Bank prospects and customers frequently move from one touch point to another to shop for products, receive customer service, make transactions and get financial advice," according to a Forrester report in April 2016. "Yet many of these cross-touch point experiences are broken or subpar. Too many banks focus on a given touch point in isolation and fail to help customers transition easily between them."
Forrester analyst Peter Wannemacher, in a blog post this month, noted that a few banks in Australia, India, Poland, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom offer mobile-to-ATM cardless cash withdrawals.
"Mobile will act as the so-called connective tissue" in many of these kinds of transactions that cross channels offered by the bank, Wannemacher wrote in the blog. "Wells Fargo is being proactive by rolling out cardless ATM access and other next-generation features."
San Francisco-based Wells Fargo may also be using these kinds of launches to burnish its image, which was battered last September when a scandal erupted over bogus checking and credit accounts that bank employees opened without customers' permission. Wells was forced to pay $185 million in fines because it opened up to 2.1 million of the unauthorized accounts.
"This is part of Wells Fargo's effort to rebuild their brand, step by step," said Ken Thomas, a Miami-based independent bank analyst. "It's going to take time. It's not just months, or a couple of launches like this. The bank's stagecoach has been wrecked on the freeway, it's been towed away, and now it's in the shop being rebuilt little by little."
