Wells Fargo & Co. has ditched BlackBerry for its mobile banking apps.
No longer is Wells fielding a mobile app that is configured for BlackBerry’s operating system (OS). Wells, the massive San Francisco bank, had previously supported BlackBerry OS 4.5.
Additionally, Wells’s mobile app — and this includes mobile deposit — is now configured only to work with iPhone iOS 6.0 or higher. Previously, the Wells app worked on iPhones with even iOS 4.3.
IOS 8.0 is scheduled to come out this fall. IOS 4.0 was released in 2010.
The changes at Wells were implemented this month.
Taken together, the two changes have Wells stepping up the tech specs of its mobile banking applications — to the detriment of consumers still on old iPhones or using BlackBerrys. Because Wells revamped its IT policies earlier this year to allow its more than 300,000 employees to “bring your own device,” known as BYOD, for work purposes, it is fair to assume that at least some Wells employees have BlackBerrys, and, therefore, will be unable to use Wells’s mobile banking platform. As they say in Ohio, too bad/so sad.