Wells Fargo Customers Can Now Access ATMs with Their Phones

Users of Wells Fargo’s mobile app can now access ATMs without their bank cards.

The company has announced a new feature that allows ATM access via One-Time Access Codes. To use an ATM, a customer needs only to go into the mobile app, get one of these temporary 8-digit codes, and enter it at the ATM terminal along with their personal PIN.

In a statement announcing the new feature, Wells Fargo Virtual Channels Head of Digital Brett Pitts explained that it reflects the bank’s belief that “the future is cardless,” while Virtual Channels Head of Operations Adam Vancini noted that “[m]obile continues to be the channel of choice for millions of our customers, so it only makes sense to leverage it for new, convenient ATM experiences.”

The bank says that this feature will be further refined later this year by enabled NFC-based mobile access to ATMs, with customers able to authenticate just by signing into a mobile wallet app – not just that of Wells Fargo, but also the likes of Apple Pay and Samsung Pay – and holding their NFC-enabled smartphones near the ATM. And given Wells Fargo’s enthusiasm for biometric authentication, and such apps’ support for fingerprint-based login, that could ultimately mean biometric mobile login for Wells Fargo ATMs.