Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) has rolled out its mobile text banking program to all its customers, making it the first bank or financial institution in America to offer the service to all its customers.
Even if you’re not signed up for online banking with Wells Fargo you are still offered the mobile text banking service.
The Wells Fargo Mobile Text Banking service allows you access to your banking information wherever your mobile phone works by text messaging, or as some call it: SMS. For those already banking on the Internet with the company, there’s nothing more to do but learn the text commands and retrieve the information you want from whatever bank account your choose.
A couple of things need to be considered, and that is first of all you need to have text messaging enabled with whoever your mobile carrier is to access the service. While seemingly obvious, a lot of people don’t have that and may wonder why they can’t get to their information.
Another thing is while the Wells Fargo Mobile Text Banking service is free, other charges related to accessing the Internet and using text messaging could apply.
Some of the information on your accounts you can access are your transaction history, account balances, information related to payments on your credit cards and the location or address of the closest Wells Fargo ATM to you.
Most mobile carriers will work with Wells text banking service, but you should check just in case, as a couple of them won’t work with it.
If you do need any help it’s simple to find it with your text messaging service. All you have to do is text the command help if you’re a registered user of Wells Fargo Mobile Text Banking and a number of other help commands targeting specific issues will appear, along with a toll-free number for Wells Fargo customer service if you need to pursue things further.
All that need to be done to activate the service to go to wf.com/text using a mobile phone with Web access and give your phone number. From there instructions on how to use the Wells Fargo Mobile Text Banking service will be given to the user.
If your account is hacked some way using the mobile text banking service, Wells Fargo does have a guarantee that 100 percent of any of your money that may have been taken from the account will be returned to you. Read the conditions though, as according to Wells Fargo, you must report the incident “60 calendar days after the date we send you the account statement showing that unauthorized activity.”
Mobile banking is just taking off, and it’ll be interesting to see how ubiquitous it become over the next several years and what types of other banking services are offered beyond basic transaction and account information.
