Eye on Mobile: Wells Rolls out Alerts; Arkansas First in M-Payments

News about the latest developments in the hot mobile-payments sector is coming from some familiar sources, such as Wells Fargo & Co. and Visa Inc., and some unlikely ones, such as the state of Arkansas. Wells Fargo is rolling out Visa's text-message and e-mail alert service that lets credit card holders quickly spot suspicious transactions, while Arkansas is claiming that it's the first state to offer a mobile option for paying for certain government services. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo began testing Visa's fraud-alert system last year and announced on Tuesday that it is rolling it out to its credit card holders at no cost. Dubbed Rapid Alerts, the system generates near-real-time alerts directly from Visa's VisaNet network?within seconds of when a transaction has occurred on a registered credit card, according to Wells and Visa. The service is not available on debit cards. Rapid Alerts contain transaction amounts, dates and times, and merchant names and locations. The cardholder sets preferences, such as whether she wants the alert to come by text message to her mobile phone or by e-mail. The cardholder also sets transaction parameters to cover as many transactions as she wants. Parameters include amount; location, such as foreign or domestic; channel, such as online or by phone; and merchant type, such as a gas station, where fraudsters often perform test transactions on stolen cards. Alerts also can flag ATM withdrawals and declined transactions. If something looks suspicious, the cardholder can call Wells to shut down the card account immediately, reducing the amount of fraud that might otherwise occur. MasterCard Inc. earlier this year launched a similar service it calls inControl with Barclays Bank in the United Kingdom, and other payments companies have been developing alert services (Digital Transactions News, Feb. 14, 2008). But Wells is one of the highest-profile banks to add alerts in the U.S. “We piloted Rapid Alerts in 2009 and received an overwhelming positive response from participants who said text alerts were an invaluable tool for monitoring their accounts,” Peter Ho, product manager for Wells Fargo Card Services and Consumer Lending, said in a news release. Meanwhile, Arkansas is claiming in a news release that it “is the first state to provide secure payment-processing services available with any smart phone.” The state government announced last week that its Arkansas.gov mobile Web site now takes payments for inmate trust-account deposits; probation and parole supervision fees and restitution; and property-tax payments for Pulaski County, the state's largest and which includes Little Rock. Inmate trust accounts are for prisoners, whose family members can fund an inmate's managed trust or prepaid phone account. The system accepts charges to Visa, MasterCard, and Discover cards coming through the operating systems of the major smart phones, including Apple Inc.'s iPhone, Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry, Google Inc.'s Android, Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile, and Palm Inc. The state government optimized Arkansas.gov for mobile devices because smart phones are becoming so popular, according to Claire Bailey, chief information officer. “We recognize that Arkansans are increasingly using their smart phones for everyday Internet access and are aggressively introducing new mobile-friendly online services that work on a range of smart-phone operating platforms,” Bailey said in the release. Arkansas.gov's mobile site is the latest enhancement to the state's so-called eGovernment services for mobile-phone users. The Arkansas Game & Fish Commission's Game Check service provides real-time game tagging for mobile devices, and the state also provides iPhone apps for the Arkansas.gov Web site and the Recovery.Arkansas.gov searchable service to locate recovery projects funded by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, according to the release. A state spokesperson did not respond to Digital Transactions News inquiries for further comment.