Checks may be getting an extended life now that financial institutions are developing and rolling out mobile remote deposit capture technology as part of their mobile banking applications, observers said.

Growing interest in the technology, which lets customers deposit checks using images captured by cameras on their smartphones, has sparked a debate over whether it might help stall the rapid decline in check use.

"Check volume is declining, but why would it decline if [banks] make it really easy to deposit" checks, said Nicole Sturgill, the research director for delivery channels at TowerGroup.

"Bank of the West is known for outstanding customer service, so naturally we want to extend that to our new mobile banking service. Mobile banking is poised to reshape the financial services industry so selecting the right solution is paramount to achieving our strategic mobile banking goal of delivering a new caliber of personalized service to our customers," said Phillip Rogers, Head of Mobile Banking at Bank of the West. "After evaluating what was available in the market, we chose ClairMail over less robust solutions because we wanted to leveragethe power of ClairMail to adapt to the individual needs of our customers."

The ClairMail mobile banking solution will enable Bank of theWest customers to access their accounts via mobile web, SMS, and a client application on virtually any mobile device including the iPhone, empowering them with greater control over their personal finances. Customers can perform a variety of activities including checking accountbalances, performing transfers and viewing transaction history. They can also sign up to receive personalized alerts over SMS and define their preferences for alert triggers (low-balance thresholds or event occurrences that activate alerts) and frequency.

"Our agreement with Bank of the West continues the significant momentum we have experienced working with the top 20 U.S. banks and further extends our market share lead in this important retailbanking segment," said ClairMail CEO Pete Daffern. "The large banks arequick to realize that mobile is much more than a check-the-box solution, and are turning to ClairMail as a trusted partner to help improve customer acquisition and retention, reduce costs and drive new revenue opportunities."

About Bank of the West
Based in San Francisco, $61 billion-asset Bank of the West (www.bankofthewest.com)offers a full range of business, corporate, personal, trust and international banking services. The Bank operates more than 700 branch locations and commercial banking offices in 19 Western and Midwestern states including 11 in the greater Sacramento area. Bank of the West's holding company, BancWest Corporation, is a subsidiary of BNP Paribas, which according to Standard & Poor's is among the six strongest banks in the world.

About ClairMail
ClairMail is the leading provider of mobile solutions for banking, payment and card services. ClairMail provides a technology platform designed to help financial institutions realize the strategic potential of mobile banking, driving new levels of customer trust and loyalty, facilitating cross-sell opportunities and enabling near term, measurable cost savings. Financial institutions of all sizes now have anopportunity to reach 100% of their customer base and proactively deliver personalized content through multi-level alerting and triple-play convergence capabilities via a central customer interface. ClairMail's platform also offers multi-channel enrollment options to maximize mobile adoption and ROI, regardless of mobile device, carrier or back-end financial system. Founded in 2004, ClairMail is headquartered in San Rafael, Calif. For more information call (415) 884-7270 or visit www.clairmail.com.

The Future Mobile Awards are given to companies that have made a significant contribution to their sector and are poised to make considerable market impact in the future. According to Juniper Research, "Wells Fargo was chosen based on its multiple platform strategy and continued service innovation such as the recent near real-time warning of potentially fraudulent activity."

Arah Erickson, senior vice president, Wells Fargo Retail Mobile Banking, commented, "Wells Fargo is an internet banking pioneer and we have extended this commitment to providing innovative mobile banking services. We are proud of our 'anytime, anywhere' banking capabilities and are honored to have our commitment recognized with this award."

Wells Fargo Mobile offers secure mobile banking which enables consumer and small business customers to access to their Wells Fargo accounts via three easy ways including text messaging (shortcode 93557), mobile website (wf.com), and downloadable applications for four of today's most popular smartphones and platforms. Customers may access wf.com through Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and iPod touch, and Palm mobile banking applications ("apps") to quickly check their accounts, pay bills, transfer funds between accounts or to another customer, and find the nearest Wells Fargo ATMs. Wells Fargo also pioneered text enrollment for mobile banking, enabling customers to sign up for text banking directly from their mobile phones, whether or not they bank online.

Introduced in March 2010 to all Consumer Credit Card customers, Wells Fargo's Rapid Alerts are enabled by Visa's transaction alerts platform. An alert is sent to a customer's mobile phone directly from Visa's global processing network - typically within seconds of a transaction occurring.

Rapid Alerts enable customers to better manage and track their account activity while providing near real-time detection of suspicious transactions so customers may take immediate action if necessary. Rapid Alerts are triggered when transactions exceed certain thresholds previously selected by the Wells Fargo Visa account holders. Alerts are delivered via SMS text message to a mobile device. Wells Fargo cardholders may choose from threshold criteria that include:

--Transactions that exceed a dollar amount chosen by the cardholder

--Transactions initiated outside the United States

--Physical card-not-present transactions, such as purchases made online or by telephone

--Cash withdrawals from an ATM machine

--Declined transactions

--Gasoline transactions

Also in August 2010, Wells Fargo's mobile banking services earned a Gold ranking, above Silver and Bronze categories in the Javelin Strategy & Research "2010 Mobile Banking Scorecard." Javelin focused on five categories: marketing and security messaging, mobile access, general mobile banking features, short message service (SMS) features and security.

"Wells Fargo has been a pioneer in mobile banking by offering all three access modes," said Mark Schwanhausser, senior analyst at Javelin Strategy. "Sometimes consumers prefer the speed of an SMS text, sometimes they prefer capabilities of a smartphone app, and sometimes they prefer to log on via a mobile browser. It's essential to provide a full range of access modes so customers can decide for themselves what's most convenient and practical."

About Wells Fargo Online & Mobile Banking

Wells Fargo is a leading provider of online and mobile financial services for individual consumers, small and middle market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, money movement, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products. Wells Fargo launched its personal computer banking service in 1989 and was the first bank to offer Internet access to account balances and transaction history through wellsfargo.com in May 1995. Since January 2009, Wells Fargo has been named the No. 1 Consumer Internet Bank in North America by Global Finance Magazine, ranked the No. 1 website out of 68 leading U.S. corporations' websites for technology innovation by the Brookings Institution and was awarded two Monarch Innovation Awards by Barlow Research for online services for small business, including Foreign Exchange Online and My Spending Report with Budget Watch.

About Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo & Company is a nationwide, diversified, community-based financial services company with $1.2 trillion in assets. Founded in 1852 and headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo provides banking, insurance, investments, mortgage, and consumer and commercial finance through more than 10,000 banking stores, 12,000 ATMs, the Internet (wellsfargo.com and wachovia.com), and other distribution channels across North America and internationally. With more than 278,000 team members, Wells Fargo serves one in three households in America. Wells Fargo & Company was ranked #19 on Fortune's 2009 rankings of America's largest corporations. Wells Fargo's vision is to satisfy all our customers' financial needs and help them succeed financially.