Wells Fargo is in the works of kicking off a new feature for their employees. At this time, a San Francisco branch is looking into having 200 of their staff members to make purchases using their cell phones! The testing of cell phone payments are expected to go on for at least six months to see if it will be efficient for staff and customers.
Peter Ho, who is the product manager of card services of Wells Fargo, tried out using his cell phone for payments for purchasing gas, food, and other necessities, but at the time, the banking system was only able to handle on transaction. In the months ahead, Ho is his employees to use their cell phones to make daily transactions.
The way this application works is in a two part process. First, employees will have to insert a microSD card in their existing phone. This will by no means interfere with their current service or applications previously downloaded on their phones. Next, when they’re ready to make a purchase at a retailer, they simply will open up the Wells Fargo Banking application, select “pay with phone” button and swap their cell phone over the pad that is designed for the phone.
If all goes well in testing of the system, plans for a mass production of Near Field Communication chips (NFC) will be produced for customer usage. According to the researchers at ISuppi, the sales of the NFC are expected to increase by 50 percent than previously estimated. This feature is expected to earn over 25 billion dollars in banking transactions by 2015!
Later this year, Nokia, AT&T, Verizon and other cell phone companies are planning a partnership within eighteen months for the NFC chip. This way it will be widely available to those who are interested in using the banking feature. Bank of America and JP Morgan are planning merges as well for their customers within the 18 month period.