Apple Pay On Its Way To ATMs

Bank of America and Wells Fargo are both in the midst of bringing Apple Pay to their ATMs, TechCrunch reported late last week.

[bctt tweet=”Coming soon to ATMs near you: Apple Pay”]

The tech publication said the information came from an unnamed source that it deemed “familiar with the teams on the projects.” Both teams are enmeshed in multi-month assignments, said TechCrunch. Wells Fargo, for its part, has said that, as noted by Jonathan Velline, head of ATMs, “we’ve been working on the technology that allows us to hook to digital wallets, leveraging NFC on mobile phones to replace the card at the transaction at the ATM. Right now, the wallet that we support is Android Pay. But we’re also looking at lots of different mobile wallets and evaluating which ones are going to be appropriate for our customers. We’ll likely add more mobile wallets throughout the year. We recognize our customers are going to have lots of different types of wallets based on their device, based on their bank, based on their OS, and we’re going to continue to find the right balance of which wallets we’re going to support.”

The executive told TechCrunch: “Right now, the initial launch is with Android Pay, but that doesn’t limit us from considering other mobile wallets.”

In a separate interview with TechCrunch, Bank Of America’s consumer banking products press representative, Betty Riess, said to the publication: “We already have [a] number of mobile wallet programs,” which, according to TechCrunch, meant that Apple Pay might indeed be in the midst of being linked to those programs.

The BoA insider went on to tell TechCrunch that her firm is “currently developing a new cardless ATM solution. This solution will enable customers to leverage NFC (near-field communication) technology on their smartphone in order to authenticate and complete transactions at a Bank of America ATM. We will roll out this capability in late February, with associates at select ATMs in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Charlotte, New York and Boston, followed by a broader rollout to customers mid-year.”

TechCrunch reported that an Apple Pay/ATM continuum might entail users tapping their phones at the NFC point of contact provided at the ATM. That, in turn, would prompt a user verification via thumbprint or PIN.