• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, July 25, 2018

Some of the innovation in the Internet of Things can be small, but useful.

One example of this is the use of near-field communication by banks.

Well Fargo was founded back in 1852, banks have been using ATMs since 1969 and NFC came into the market in 2002. Wells Fargo now has more than 265,000 employees with revenue north of $94 billion, as the third-largest bank in the U.S.

Wells Fargo’s use of merging NFC with its 5,000 ATMs is a good example of using technology to simplify a process.

With NFC at ATMs, the wireless technology allows the same "tap and pay" activity that consumers already use with mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay.

Customers can use the ATM feature without a physical card by opening their smartphone wallet, such as Wells Fargo Wallet or Apple Pay, hold their phone near the terminal’s NFC reader and enter their code. That’s it.

Wells Fargo notes that more than half of bank customers with a smartphone use mobile banking and about a third of millennials already use digital payments.

All that banks like Wells Fargo are doing is moving with the market, a market increasingly being powered by IoT innovations, small and large. Businesses not keeping up will pay in the long run.