Wells Fargo Goes Real Time For P2P

Starting Aug. 1, Wells Fargo will be bringing its 17 million+ mobile banking customers real-time P2P payments, thanks to Early Warning’s clearXchange network.

As part of the deal, Wells Fargo will enable those customers the chance to send funds in real time for no cost to any customer that participates in the same program on the network. As it stands now, Wells Fargo customers themselves can already do this for free from customers within the network.

“At Wells Fargo, we’re always looking for new ways to make our customers’ lives easier, and one thing we’ve been hearing is that they’d like to be able to quickly send money to their friends, family and other people who bank with other financial institutions,” said Brett Pitts, Head of Digital for Wells Fargo Virtual Channels. “We’re very excited to announce that Wells Fargo customers will soon have access to real-time P2P payments through our mobile app, which will allow them to securely send and receive money with tens of millions of banking customers across the country, at any time, with immediate funds availability.”

For those customers wanting to use the real-time P2P payments service, this can be done via Well’s Fargo’s mobile and tablet app. They can send a P2P payment using an email address or phone number of the recipient and it will generate the payment notification. To keep credentials safe, account info is never shared between the parties.

Earlier this month, Wells Fargo said it is introducing a new payment option as part of its existing Payment Manager service that will allow for B2P payments. The financial institution said that check usage may be slowing but the issuance of paper as a form of payment still tops more than 3 billion checks annually. That archaic form of payment spans everything from tax refunds to insurance claims. Wells Fargo said that the business-to-person addition to its platform means that as of early 2017 enterprises will be able to pay any consumer with a U.S. bank account and will not need to store that bank account information.