The rise in e-commerce has pushed Wells Fargo to begin development on a gateway product for business clients that will support international transactions online, Colleen Taylor, head of merchants services at the bank, told Bank Innovation.

“We’re finding that in an e-commerce environment, you can sell around the globe and you need a capability to accept payments from around the globe,” Taylor said, adding that omnichannel access that allows end customers to shop online, in-store and on mobile devices has become table stakes. For instance, some of the bank’s merchants in Seattle support Canadian consumers, who accept payments in Canadian dollars. “So an e-commerce gateway that can facilitate those kinds of transactions is necessary,” she said. 

Wells Fargo already offers a gateway capability to larger retailers that plugs into the business’s website and processes a card payment via a secure transfer to a card payment network. But now, the omnichannel access for customers is a minimum requirement, Taylor said, as more of the bank’s regional and medium-sized businesses eye payment capabilities that connect the various shopping channels. Many of these smaller business are not able to even accept mobile payments, she noted.

Well Fargo’s new e-commerce gateway product will expand to accept foreign currencies, transact around the globe and have a bigger focus on omnichannel, Taylor said. Wells Fargo is currently vetting vendor partners to develop the product and is working toward having a pilot before a market release “in the next few quarters,” Taylor said.

The gateway product mirrors the capabilities of big tech companies like Amazon, Shopify and BlueSnap. Incumbents like Bank of America and M&T Bank, meanwhile, already offer e-commerce gateways to help merchants accept payments.

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Wells Fargo’s decision to partner with a vendor that has existing gateway capabilities was driven, in part, by the acceleration of product development amid the pandemic. “You need to move quicker and it’s because the market needs a quicker response,” Taylor said .

The $1.9 trillion bank is “going to double down on future investments that will facilitate more e-commerce and mobile commerce and contactless,” she added. This focus coincides with an increase in active digital customers, up 4% year over year to 31.1 million, according to the bank’s second-quarter earnings.

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