With Wells Fargo Jumping in the Fray, Mobile Banking gets a Real Start
With banking facilities moving out of the branch, and into homes and computers as a matter of convenience, it's only a matter of time before the whole banking experience goes right in your pocket. In fact, the time is right now; Wells Fargo has just announced the launch of a text message banking service that'll be open to all its customers, whether or not they subscribe to an Internet banking facility with that bank. And they get major bragging rights with this launch too - Wells Fargo is close to being the first bank in the country to offer cellphone banking. Wells Fargo feels that retail banking customers really need to be able to check how much money they have, with the least fuss possible. But there are lots of other scraps of essential information you get through text message mobile banking - you could get the location of an ATM nearby messaging ATM and your zip code, and so on.
The banks don't really charge anything for such a service, but it also depends on your phone carrier. They'll charge you for the text message of course, and also, services such as these tend to not work with all cellphone services. Lots of people these days don't actually have messaging enabled on their plans, and they will usually run up against a little bit of disappointment when they realize that this new service is going to take a little time to arrange for.
Mobile banking right now is kind of where credit cards were 50 years ago; people aren't really sure they want this new service. And so, to promote a little trust and to win a little customer enthusiasm, they are giving you the kind of ironclad guarantee you get with credit cards. If there is any fraud that takes place that drains any money out of your account, the bank will put it all back for you, just as long as you don't take longer than 60 days to report the problem after they send you an account statement.
It's just as well that they are putting up this guarantee - there is a wave of all-new phishing scams expected to hit mobile banking - and expected to be much worse than it ever was on computers. People are just downloading apps left and right on their cell phones without a thought and it won't be long before someone invents a piece of malware app. Would you believe that Google actually identified 50 apps on its Android market that were malicious? And there aren't even that many Android-enabled phones in use now. If this is the kind of rousing enthusiasm you see in the malware community for mobile banking now before anything has even started, things should get really interesting in a couple of years when everyone's shooting off mobile banking text messages all the time.