CommBank unveils new mobile banking apps

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 12 July 2011 14:38

Your IT - Mobility

The Commonwealth Bank has made a strong play for leadership in mobile banking - a market of rapidly increasing importance - with the launch of a new NetBank app for iPad and Android tablets and a new mobile banking app for iPhone, Android and Windows 7.

The new app provides access to the mobile NetBank and CommSec web sites, the CommBank Property Guide and a new foreign exchange toolkit that includes a currency converter, the Bank's current buy and sell rates, calculators for cash rates, Travel Money Card and international money transfers.

It also allows users to set buying and selling currency alerts and can track a currency's historical performance over two years. It covers 33 currencies, more than any other bank, CommBank says.

Feedback from early downloaders of the Android version has been generally positive. However users with a Sony Xperia X10 and the HTC Magic found that the logon window did not appear. CommBank said it was aware of the problem and working on a solution but was unable to give a timeframe

Commonwealth Bank chief marketing and online officer, Andy Lark, said the announcement was only the first of many that the Bank would be making as it ramped up its push into mobile banking.

"You will see us innovate around social, Facebook, Twitter and the like and integrating that into our strategy. And we will be integrating NFC as soon as the handset vendors are ready to go. But we will have some things before then that we will introduce in the coming months.

The new app for iPhones and Androids represents the first major upgrade in two years, but according to Lark the pace of change will accelerate. "You should expect to see us making announcements with the similar frequency as a technology company'¦We are now past the turning point in all forms of mobile as an access point into banking'¦What you will see is the diversity of uses of the mobile platform broadening rapidly."

He also foreshadowed an early play from the bank in mobile payments. "You can expect to lead very aggressively in the mobile payments space."

Lark said: "We are by far the most downloaded banking app in Australia and the fifth most visited Australian web site (across all sites)." The Bank claims to be the only financial services web site in the top 10.

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