Commbank launches Kaching on Android, adds ‘Bump’ payments for iPhone
06 July, 2012
category: NFC
Australia’s Commonwealth Bank has announced that its Kaching mobile payments app is now available on 13 Android mobile devices, including the NFC-enabled Samsung Galaxy S3.
Android Kaching users can perform standard mobile banking functions as well as make peer-to-peer payments using a person’s mobile phone number, email address or Facebook account. The app does not support NFC in its current iteration, but Commbank says it will be made available “once the respective handset and software vendors make that functionality available to the market.”
“As promised, today we gave Android users access to Kaching, which will particularly appeal to the youth market who are using Android more and more,” commented Andy Lark, Commbank’s chief marketing and online officer.
Commbank has also released a new “Bump” payments feature for the iOS version of Kaching. Starting today, CommBank Kaching customers running iOS4.2 or above can simply tap phones together to make peer-to-peer payments. Presumably this feature is enabled by the iCarte protective case, which also powers Kaching’s contactless payments feature.
Commbank also announced it will launch CommBank Kaching for Facebook later this year, making it possible for customers to do all their banking without ever leaving Facebook. This version of Kaching will enable users to view their balances and transactions, make peer-to-peer payments and make BPAY payments and third party transfers – all secured by NetCode SMS. The app will be available in Facebook sometime later this year.
“The power of Facebook for payments is only now becoming clear,” said David Lindberg, Commbank’s executive general manager of Cards Payments and Retail Strategy. “It will change banking for consumers and for small business, providing hundreds of thousands of merchants in Australia with full payments systems access.”
According to Commbank, Kaching has been downloaded more than 365,000 times since its launch and is responsible for over $1 billion in transfers to date.