Wells Fargo Agrees to Honor ID Card Issued by Colombia

Wells Fargo & Co. said Tuesday that it had agreed to open accounts for Colombian immigrants who have identification cards issued by their government.

Many banks accept government ID cards issued by Mexican consulates to allow Mexican nationals to establish accounts, wire money out of the country and execute other banking transactions.

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo is the first U.S. bank to accept the Colombian card as sufficient identification to establish an account, said Carlos Valencia Munoz, the Colombian vice consul in Los Angeles.

Consular officials hope to persuade other banks to accept the card, Munoz said.

U.S. banks consider Latino immigrants a significant growth market and are competing vigorously to sign them up for money-transfer services, hoping that will lead to sales of other bank services.

Wells Fargo was the first bank to accept the Mexican consular card in 2001. In 2002 it began accepting Guatemalan and Argentine consular cards as identification.

Since then, the bank says, it has opened more than 750,000 accounts for customers using a consular identification card from Mexico, Guatemala or Argentina.

Colombia plans to start issuing ID cards to its citizens living in the U.S. on May 1.