Wells Fargo has a history of betting on raw technologies -- and then staying with them as they steadily get better. As far back as 1989, Wells Fargo offered consumers a primitive version of online banking, conducted through the Prodigy dial-up service. Bank executives remember it as a "very clunky" beginning, full of long, typed commands on text-heavy pages that lacked any graphics. But it was a start.

By 1995, Wells Fargo had a more appealing version of Internet home banking. Refinements followed steadily every few months. By 1998, Wells Fargo had more than 1 million Internet customers for home banking -- more than any other U.S. bank. That total now tops 1.9 million -- a full 23% of all Wells Fargo checking-account holders. By most tallies, Wells Fargo has a larger percentage of its retail account holders online than any other major bank.

In wireless Internet banking, though, Wells Fargo is playing catch-up. Canadian, European, and Japanese banks are far ahead of their U.S. counterparts. Even in California, Bank of America has moved faster to enable account-balance checks via a Palm VII.

In a race to market, Reed says, it's often an advantage to have a small and focused partner like 724 Solutions to negotiate with telecommunications companies. That way, a few crucial issues can be dealt with quickly. If Wells Fargo were handling all talks with companies such as AT&T and Sprint, she concedes, "we could end up saying, 'We want to be your strategic partner, and here are 28 ways that we could work together.' Eight years later, you'd still be negotiating."

That said, Wells Fargo assumes the lead role in dealing with regulators. Take something like the standard boilerplate disclosures that certain money-market accounts aren't federally insured. Those can be thousands of words long, and banks know how to present them on paper, or on a personal computer. But if cell-phone users had to scroll through such an endless disclaimer, their batteries would go dead -- and their monthly bills would top $100 -- before they could do any real banking.

After some detailed talks with the OCC earlier this year, Wells Fargo was given clearance to test its wireless-banking pilot program on current customers without having to post such detailed warnings. "We try to take the high road and think about what a sensible regulatory approach would be, rather than turning it into something adversarial," says Reed. Wells Fargo is able to do that, she says, because it has established a constructive working relationship with regulators over many decades. If a startup tried to draft its own rules, it wouldn't fare nearly as well.

George Anders (ganders@fastcompany.com), a Fast Company senior editor, is based in Silicon Valley. Contact Steve Ellis or Clyde Ostler by email (groverw@wellsfargo.com), or visit Wells Fargo & Co. on the Web (www.wellsfargo.com).

Sidebar: Partnerships That Prosper

When it comes to creating the future of the Internet economy, two heads really are better than one. As big companies and Internet upstarts try to conquer the Web together, culture-blending exercises are nice, but after the last slice of pizza has been eaten and the final Foosball goal has been scored, lots of hard work remains. Here are four rules that Wells Fargo has learned can make all the difference between getting such alliances right -- and wishing that you'd never bookmarked a partner's site.

1. Pick up your chairs and move into each other's world. Teamwork happens slowly, and it requires intense communication at every step. That's unlikely to occur if two teams work in separate offices governed by separate cultures. When Wells Fargo wanted an online business-procurement system in a hurry, its partnership with RightWorks clicked because key employees from both companies worked side by side at Wells Fargo's offices.
2. Take chances on almost everything -- except your reputation. It's thrilling to see how Web-based upstarts break the rules to launch products fast. But big companies sometimes must be the sober-minded grown-ups in the relationship. Wells Fargo delegates a lot to its startup allies, for example, but the bank commands talks with regulators. Similarly, human faces aren't shown on the bank's Web site, because of concern about possible gender or racial stereotyping. That irks some startups, but it prevents embarrassments from occurring. In June, when a neighborhood guide for home hunters included some racially charged language, Wells Fargo quickly removed the guide from the site.
3. Manage deadlines so that little snags don't become disasters. The optimism of young partners is inspiring and contagious -- but it's hardly a recipe for realistic scheduling. Big-company backers are often needed to set deadlines and to offer project-management expertise, making sure that things stay on track. Inexperienced managers may shout when things go off course. At Wells Fargo, project-management veterans stay calm and figure out how to keep one small team's troubles from snarling up everyone else's progress.
4. Let a startup partner keep you in step with a fast-changing world. Big companies may excel at coming up with a long-term strategy, but they aren't nearly so nimble at reacting to sudden market changes. Acknowledging that schism, many alliances let a smaller partner control those parts of the plan that are most susceptible to fine-tuning. In working with more than a dozen makers of cell-phones and handheld computers, for example, Wells Fargo lets a much smaller company, 724 Solutions, figure out what technology to use -- or overhaul -- as wireless banking continues to evolve.