Wells Fargo Adds Software, Services to Corporate Cards

The bank's recently developed iPhone app for corporate treasurers may be reconfigured for the iPad if customers ask for it.

Wells Fargo's Treasury Management Group has been expanding its relationships with commercial clients beyond financial services and into managed services and workflow. The latest example is the group's announcement yesterday that it enhanced the software and services it offers with its WellsOne commercial card.

The Commercial Card Expense Reporting service provides online program administration, reporting, and reconciliation for employees' travel expenses, vehicle fuel and maintenance expenses, and small- and large-dollar corporate purchases, including accounts payable disbursements. The bank says this provides one multipurpose card and the software needed to manage travel and entertainment expenses, procurement, petty cash, purchase orders and invoices. It can generate commercial customers' global cash position statements, automaticallly pulling in their Wells Fargo account data.

Before, customers typically compiled such reports using Excel, and they had to gather information and produce forecasts manually.

"They had to spend more time on gathering information versus managing it," says Danny Peltz, executive vice president and head of the treasury management group. "This makes them more efficient." The enhancement announced yesterday was single sign-on for Wells Fargo-issued U.S. and Canadian dollar cards and automated international ACH processing for Canadian cardholders to settle out-of-pocket and personal expenses to Canadian bank accounts.

The program is part of Wells Fargo's Commercial Electronic Office portal. Peltz, who oversees the portal, says his group recently wrote an iPhone application for it. "The user interface is preloaded so you can pass data faster," he says. Many customers have already started entering the portal from iPad devices using the iPhone app, which has surprised Peltz. If customers ask for it, the bank will customize the app for the iPad, he says.

Peltz's colleague, Keith Theisen, executive vice president and director of product management for Wells Fargo's treasury management group, will be sharing more details about Wells Fargo's initiatives in this area at Bank Systems & Technology's virtual event on The New Payments Landscape May 12.