Buoyed by impressive user stats, Commonwealth Bank of Australia has released a suite of tablet and phone apps across multiple platforms, and promised regular upgrades for up-and-coming functionality across social media and NFC payments.
The banks has luanched a new NetBank app for iPad and Android tablets and a new mobile banking app for iPhone, Android and Windows 7. The apps offer access to online banking and trading, ATM and branch locations, foreign exchange rates, and the bank's augmented-reality property guide.
The launch represents the the first big investment in CommBank's mobile strategy in almost two years and come on the back of a sharp rise in user consumption. The bank says it now gets 3.3 million page views per month from mobile users - up 347% since 2010 - and 140,000 log-ins per week from the iPad.
The data chimes with a newly-released online survey of over 13,000 people by IDG, which finds that two-thirds of respondents worldwide now use a smartphone for personal (73%) or business (69%) purposes, with 70% browsing the Internet regularly and using mobile applications.
Commonwealth Bank chief marketing and online officer, Andy Lark, says: "We are now past the turning point in all forms of mobile as an access point into 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."