What’s next from Wells Fargo & Co.’s mobile channel?

Here are the internal projects Wells is investing in now, courtesy of none other than John Shewsberry, the megabank’s chief financial officer:

• Wells is building an appointment application that will allow its customers to set up meetings with Wells bankers using the technology;
• Wells is testing technology that will allow the bank to authenticate customers as they enter branches, and inform branch employees when those customers are in the stores; and
• Wells is working on advanced authentication at the ATM that would use mobile devices as the authentication tool.

Wells leaked word of these mobile channel initiatives during its earnings call yesterday.

The bank is essentially amping up its mobile banking investments. As we reported yesterday, Wells is being driven by massive growth in its mobile channel, which contained 14.1 million active customers at the end of last quarter. Indeed, Shewsberry was upfront about just how significant is the mobile revolution to Wells, saying “mobile is the fastest-growing, fastest-adopted channel we’ve had in [the] history of our company.”

Wells Fargo was founded in 1852.

Shewsberry said Wells was “actually learning a lot of those things from retailers and other service providers outside of our industry” to fuel its mobile development. That’s the first time that we can recall one of the four major banks publicly citing outside industries as the inspiration for mobile channel development. Wells has little choice but to plow ahead in mobile. Today, Bank of America announced that 12% of its total deposit transactions are coming from the mobile channel, a 3x increase in just the last two years. If you think Wells doesn’t know what’s happening at Bank of America, et al, you are fooling yourself. Here’s how Shewsberry put it:

[T]he things that customers can now do “mobilely” and the things that they’ll be able to do in the next year or two as we continue to introduce new capabilities is really exciting. … It’s really important.

That’s the bank’s CFO talking, folks.