Wells Fargo is bringing PayPal to the point of sale.
The bank’s mobile customers will now have the ability to make purchases through the mobile wallet in-store, as well as through mobile and online methods, the bank announced today.
Android Pay announced an agreement with PayPal this morning, which means more banks should announce PayPal implementations soon.
“Currently, Wells Fargo customers can pay for purchases online and on mobile at millions of merchants where PayPal is accepted,” said Jim Smith, head of virtual channels for Well Fargo. “This agreement will leverage the companies’ collective mobile leadership, and allow customers to use a Wells Fargo debit or credit card in the PayPal Wallet app to make ‘tap and pay’ NFC payments using an Android phone.”
The announcement follows several other perks launched for Wells Fargo mobile customers — who now number 20 million, at a 14% increase from this time last year — including the ability to access the bank’s ATM card-free, through their mobile app.
The integration with PayPal will allow customers to pay through their PayPal mobile wallet, one of the most popular mobile wallets currently available for consumers. Consumers simply have to add their Wells Fargo cards to their PayPal wallet, or conversely, add their PayPal accounts to their Android Pay app.
From there, it works like any other payment through an NCF terminal: users load up the application, tap their phones to the terminal, and pay.
“We at Wells Fargo believe that the steady increase of NFC-enabled payment terminals, in addition to the proliferation of NFC-enabled ATMs, will drive customer adoption of mobile wallets,” Smith told Bank Innovation. “As of April 2017, millions of US retail stores have NFC enabled payment terminals, and more than 50% of Wells Fargo’s ATMs will be NFC-enabled by the end of this year.”
The capability will be available at any merchant that presently accepts PayPal, which gives consumers a fairly wide network for in-store purchasing. Wells customers also get the additional perk of having these transactions monitored for fraud, same as any purchase with a Wells Fargo debit or credit card.
At the moment, as Smith noted, Wells is only rolling out the ability to Android users, which are the most active of the bank’s mobile usership—Android banking customers log on to their mobile banking applications for an average of 16 sessions per month, according to the bank. Apple currently limits use of NFC payments on iOS devices to Apple Pay.