Mobile Banking
April 30th, 2010, 12:32pm by KelvinI just downloaded a Wells Fargo prog for my phone, and I’m trying to decide if I’d ever use it. Have you guys done any mobile banking? The app has an ATM finder, allows you to check balances, transfer money between accounts, and do billpay. ATM finder is a good idea, I guess, but I’d rather have that in a mapping program (Google Maps). It’s not like I’d keep a Chevron program in case I need gas.
None of the other features seem like anything I’d ever do in a mobile setting. Maybe I’d pay a bill in case I’d otherwise forget? The one missing feature is the ability to make trades from my Wells Fargo Borkerage, since timeliness is so critical in trading (SELL SELL SELL!)
Part of my App of the Week series 🙂
April 30th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Wells Fargo’s mobile site is actually exactly the same as the WebOS app, with the exception of not being able to find nearby ATMs by GPS. Even more useless. BTW, I’m commenting from within Poster (a new feature).
April 30th, 2010 at 8:24 pm
I have an app called AroundMe that has categories for nearby things, and banks/atms is one of them. Kinda useful.
As for other online banking, I’ve never had the need for on-the-go transactions (not since buying and selling at La Salsa at the Costa Verde Shopping Center in San Diego, anyway). I’d kinda prefer to keep that sort of thing on a real computer, I guess.
April 30th, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Yeah, I use Where for the same thing (nearby gas stations, ATMS, etc). I’ve been doing mobile trading ever since I can remember :), but mobile banking just seems unnecessary. I can usually wait to check my balances. That said, did I get my state tax refund yet? Fires up the WF app…
April 30th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
BTW, Poster is supposed to let me read and edit comments to posts that I’ve written, but I’m getting an error saying that I’m not allowed to edit comments. Is that a WordPress setting? It’s preventing me from reading them in the app(but not posting them).
May 1st, 2010 at 12:38 pm
kelvin makes a good point. I’ll have to finish averaging into HPQ (Palm’s latest bigger fish) at lunch, to.
May 3rd, 2010 at 11:12 am
Don’t know — you can edit comments in the WP dashboard, right? If you can find anybody who says how to configure WP so that Poster works better, let me know.
May 4th, 2010 at 3:49 pm
I use the BofA mobile app for iPhone for paying bills. I get most of my bills as eBills, so I pay them right when they are received from the phone. I’ve used the ATM finder once…in Vegas…it was a bad night.
May 4th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
That’s cool. BofA should make it so you can reply to the eBill email to initiate payment. By the way, http://www.bofa.mobi looks exactly the same as the iPhone app, but I’m actually more picky with my bookmarks list than I am with my installed program list.
May 5th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Tuaw posted an article on the 8 things that are better on the iPhone than on the iPad, and mobile banking was on that list! Given my disparaging statements here, I suppose there are only 7 reasons for me to get an iPhone instead of an iPad (one of those, not surprisingly, is the ability to make phone calls).
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/05/05/eight-ways-the-iphone-pwns-the-ipad/
May 5th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
First of all, I’m surprised you read TUAW! I saw that article, too, and agreed with a commenter that said, “You made one point that it can make phone calls, and seven points that said it was portable.” I think you could have said “moble (anything)” and made it onto that list.
And I can’t bring myself to do paperless delivery of bills — I’d lose the email in my inbox, and I need the paper reminder of bills to pay anyway. That being said, I definitely *pay* my bills online, but my crappy bank has a pretty archaic system (but I don’t pay any monthly fees, so I guess I get what I pay for!).
May 5th, 2010 at 4:05 pm
@Mike BofA has a pretty nicely integrated eBill system. Most of my major bills (credit cards, utilities, etc) are true eBills, but a handful are manually set up by me from paper bills (HOA, waste disposal, etc). Oh…and BofA checking is *free* with direct deposit.