Apple Pay to be integrated into Bank of America and Wells Fargo ATMs
Cardless ATMs are on their way, as major banking institutions gear up to integrate NFC technology, and make it available to the public. According to recent information gathered from reports and contacts made directly with representatives of the respective organizations, both Bank of America, and Wells Fargo seem to be working towards offering cardless alternatives to customers looking to use Apple Pay, and other contactless methods, to interact with ATMs.
“We’ve been working on the technology that allows us to hook to digital wallets, leveraging NFC on mobile phones to replace the card at the transaction at the ATM.” Wells Fargo’s chief engineer of ATMS Jonathan Velline has revealed in a recent interview. So far, the wallet supported by Wells Fargo is Android Pay, but also according to Velline, “...we’re also looking at lots of different mobile wallets and evaluating which ones are going to be appropriate for our customers. We’ll likely add more mobile wallets throughout the year...”.
At present, Wells Fargo is vetting a range of different options to offer to customers, including Apple Pay, keeping in mind the need of customers to be able to use a method of interacting with ATMs, compatible with their devices and OS.
Bank of America has also revealed its own plans for integrating NFC in ATMs, according to products press representatives Betty Riess, Bank of America already has a number of mobile wallet programs in the works, likely to include Apple Pay in the near future.
Bank of America’s own app is already supporting fingerprint recognition on both Android and iOS, which could mean that customers may not even need to use mobile wallets at all, to “log in” to ATMs for cash withdrawals. Deposits, however, may require Apple Pay and other technologies, to transfer money from external accounts.
On this note, Riess has confirmed that Bank of America is working on a new type of cardless ATM solution, which will be available to customers, in an initial Silicon Valley rollout, towards the end of February, with possible expansion across the United States. Word has it that chase Bank will also rollout its own cardless ATMs sometimes this year.
How will cardless ATM work?
As the name suggests, cardless ATMS will no longer require debit or credit cards. Instead, it will be sufficient to bring a smartphone close enough to an ATM, to be able to log into the terminal, using the device’s own fingerprint reader, or by tapping a PIN number using the smartphone’s own touchscreen, for access to the customer’s own account, and to process transactions.
This method will effectively render any criminal effort to steal credit and debit card information, through direct tampering of an ATM, useless, as well as curbing the chance of fraudulent transactions taking place.