Wells Fargo & Co. says it will introduce new features for its corporate cash management services on mobile devices and desktop workstations simultaneously.
"Mobile is becoming just another channel, another way of communicating with customers, so we are synching up those development efforts," said Megan Minich, the channel manager for the San Francisco company's Commercial Electronic Office cash management portal.
The synchronized approach demonstrates that mobile banking is becoming a more accepted financial service, especially among corporate users, according to Ms. Minich, who was previously the head of the mobile technologies team in Wells' wholesale Internet and treasury solutions unit.
Wells put that strategy to work for the first time last week by introducing a service that lets authorized CEO Mobile users initiate and approve federal tax wire transfers with their phones. That release also included a feature enabling authorized users to determine what types of account administration tasks they are permitted to handle with the phone, and which must be done at a computer. (Only some tasks, such as password resets, can be authorized through a mobile device.)
When Wells introduced the mobile cash management service in May of last year, it offered information reporting for corporate officers. Since then Wells has added several features, such as initiation and approval of wire transfers and review of positive pay exceptions, and Ms. Minich said her company expects to update the capabilities at least quarterly.
"Now that we have live customers we can work with, we get additional requests," she said.
About 10% of CEO Mobile users are accessing the portal through Apple Inc's iPhone, and about half use BlackBerry handsets made by Research in Motion Ltd.; various devices using Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile operating system account for most of the rest of the users.
