SAN FRANCISCO – Your bank might want to ditch its “mobile banking” service.

That’s because mobile devices create what Brian Pearce, senior vice president and head of retail mobile channel, internet services group at Wells Fargo & Co., called during a presentation at Bank Innovation 2012 last week simultaneous channels.

A consumer walks into a bank branch and, voila, she is immediately connected to their financial institutions on two separate channels — mobile and branch — at the same time. Not just bankers, but all industries with physical and digital channels need to understand this novel dynamic.

Mobile is a “simultaneous” and “complimentary” channel because as consumers  visit their bank branches or ATMs while also carrying their mobile phones, the bank can interact with that consumer via the devices, Pearce.

“It’s not acceptable to have a siloed channel experience anymore,” said Pearce. Yet, “banks haven’t done much” with the simultaneous customer interaction dynamic to date. 

“Mobile phones are not a shrunken PC,” Pearce said. “They are a whole new beast and customer expectations have dramatically changed.”

But Pearce took note of an industry that is taking advantage of the simultaneous nature of mobile phones: retail. Some retail stores are making barcodes on products harder for mobile devices to read so in-store consumers cannot easily price shop online through their smartphones.

“They don’t want customers to see price comparisons on Amazon,” Pearce said. “Banks need to catch up with retailers.”

Several attendees at Bank Innovation 2012 told us they had never thought of this notion of simultaneous connectivity. To be truthful, we hadn’t either. As Pearce made it clear, the possibilities to creatively take advantage of simultaneous connectivity are nearly endless.