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Wells Fargo announced a few days ago that they were taking advantage of a new Visa feature.

Of course, I had to immediately enroll. You then receive text message alerts when certain types and size of transactions occur. The idea is that if it isn’t you, you can immediately respond and become part of the fraud prevention paradigm. I was somewhat skeptical, as usual, but as it turned out hours later I was picking up my wife’s BMW from the shop (ouch $1200!!!) and while I was still standing at the check-out desk, my phone got a text reporting the transaction to me. It was very descriptive, telling me that my “Wells Fargo Card ending in xx was used at xxx Motors in xxx town for $xxxx.xx ….

This is real progress.

I had previously enrolled in their alerting offer but due to the number of different acquirers and issuers and the batch nature of credit card processing, these often did not arrive until days later.

Since, Visa’s switch is involved in the authorization of all Visa transactions, these alerts can go out literally in real time.

Of course someone will try and call this a mobile payment! (see my article in Venture Beat!)