Wells Fargo is gearing up to unveil a mobile transaction plan that could enable customers to withdraw cash from ATMs as early as this spring without a debit card.
According to a report by CNNMoney, customers will be able to use their smartphones to take out money after they log into the Wells Fargo app and request an eight-digit access code. All they need at the ATM is that code to withdraw cash.
The report noted Wells Fargo is gearing up to convert all of the 13,000 ATMs in its network to include this new service. Wells Fargo contends it will be the first bank to complete a full conversion of its ATMs, reported CNNMoney.
“That’s the game-changer for us, that we’ll be doing this to all of our ATMs,” Wells Fargo spokeswoman Hilary O’Byrne told CNNMoney. Still, not everyone is convinced it will be such a big deal. Wes Dunn, senior vice president of sales for the ATM manufacturer Genmega Inc., told CNNMoney he wasn’t sure it will increase the convenience factor enough to get people to use it. “Getting out a piece of plastic and inserting it is not so terribly difficult, so outside of being trendy and cool, I fail to see the benefit to the cardholder themselves,” he said.
The move on the part of Wells Fargo comes at a time when there are concerns about this new way of withdrawing cash from an ATM. Financial institutions are rolling out cardless ATM transactions in which customers can use their mobile phones to withdraw money, but Krebs on Security found that that feature can be hacked, with the bad guys quickly and quietly taking stolen bank account usernames and passwords and getting cash out of ATMs with them. According to the report, even worse, it may be hard for customers to dispute the cardless ATM withdrawals because the victim is seemingly at the scene where the crime happened.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has formed an artificial intelligence (AI)-centric health partnership with General Catalyst.
AWS says the collaboration, announced Monday (Jan. 13), combines its tech expertise with General Catalyst’s history of healthcare investments.
“AWS and General Catalyst believe that AI has immense potential to [effect] meaningful change in global health care,” AWS CEO Matt Garman said in a news release. “Together, we are taking bold steps to improve patient outcomes and make quality care more accessible to all by embedding AI throughout the care journey.”
According to the release, the partnership will focus on building and deploying AI-powered solutions to address crucial needs in predictive and personalized care, interoperability, operational and clinical efficiency, diagnostics and patient engagement.
The potential here is “vast,” the companies said, with plans to employ the power of generative AI using Amazon Bedrock and team with providers like Anthropic and Mistral AI as well as securely trained health care-specific models.
“One example is the ability to drive more personalized health care by using disease-specific models that process diverse health data—such as radiology and pathology scans, genomic sequencing information, clinical trial data, and electronic health records—to help doctors and researchers identify patterns and diagnose, make predictions about treatment outcomes, offer insights into disease progression, and more,” the release said.
Writing Monday about the intersection between generative AI (GenAI) and healthcare, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster posited a world in which “your doctor knows you’re getting sick before you do” and healthcare is more of a “proactive partnership” than a thing to worry about.
“GenAI has the potential to shift the conversation — and time and dollars spent — from how much it costs to make people well when they get sick to preventing illness before it even begins,” Webster wrote. “That will make the future of healthcare about using GenAI to better understand and prevent disease. Interactions with the patient will become patient-first and smart-technology driven.”
The economics, that report adds, are “compelling,” as U.S. healthcare costs — which came to nearly $5 trillion in 2023 — are projected to reach $7.7 trillion by 2032. Many consumers, especially younger ones, say they’ll skip or delay medical care because they can’t afford it.
“That’s not just expensive — it’s unsustainable,” Webster wrote.
“By using intelligent monitoring devices and personalized health insights, it’s possible to dramatically reduce the cost of chronic disease management. Medication can be remotely prescribed, administered and monitored as appropriate, staving off a full-blown, expensive and potentially physically debilitating medical crisis.”
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
Learn More