Javelin Strategy & Research Blog

Thanks to Wells Fargo, mobile banking is now much more mobile.

Thursday,  the giant bank – which was one of the first to take a leap into SMS text banking — became the first U.S. bank to enable customers to sign up without having to go through online banking. It’s a hugely important milestone because previously the banking industry has limited the reach of mobile banking to a subset of its customers who bank online – excluding those who are tech-savvy enough to buy a smartphone but haven’t yet been won over to banking online.

Now, Wells Fargo customers with smartphones – who have fueled adoption of mobile banking in general — can sign up for text banking by browsing to wf.com/text. After entering their mobile number, Wells will beam out a welcome text message with instructions to get them started with text banking by dialing 93557 and entering short codes such as “BAL” or “ACT” to check balances or verify if a deposit has cleared. 

To be sure, it’s prudent for banks to start with online enrollment and gain experience with mobile banking in steady steps. But as Javelin reiterated in our 2009 Javelin Mobile-Banking Scorecard last October, banks will not enjoy the full potential of mobile banking until they enable customers to sign up via the mobile device. Better yet, banks should also step up efforts to enroll customers through branches, call centers and ATMs, too.

In our scorecard, we found that only 18 of the 40 biggest U.S. banks by deposits offer mobile banking, and Wells Fargo was one of only five that earned “gold” ratings based on features, access channels and basic marketing. Obviously, none of them earned points for offering the ability to enroll customers in mobile banking via the mobile device, so this news likely would have been enough to vault Wells to the top of our rankings ahead of USAA.

There was one other notable feature that none of the top 40 retail banks offered as well: two-way interactive alerts that will enable customers to take action on an alert right then and there. Javelin’s scorecard found that none of those banks has rolled such an alert yet, but big banks aren’t the only place where innovation happens. As noted in our soon-to-be-released report on innovative alerts, ClairMail has scored twice on this score. Navy Federal Credit Union has quietly launched a bill-payment alert that tracks whether members have paid a bill yet, and Bank of Stockton is very near to rolling out an overdraft alert. It’s only a matter of time before the giant banks offer interactive alerts, too.

First baby steps, now longer strides. Mobile banking is growing up.