St George bank has today announced that they’re addressing the growing wearables market, announcing that they’ve updated their St.George Banking App, to work with the Sony Smartwatch 2. The App will now supply account balances and directions to the watch.
The new features require three apps installed on your phone for it to work, the Sony Smart Connect app, SmartWatch 2 extension and of course the St.George Mobile Banking App. This will then allow customers to access their account balance at a glance, St George also says that the app will also direct customers to ATMs using GPS as well as giving access to ‘SMS alerts and emails with details of key deposits and withdraw(l)s’.
There’s a stategy of innovation here, initially the focus is on the Sony SmartWatch 2, but it’s just the beginning. With wearable tech cropping up more frequently, the team is also intending to bring St George’s banking App to the other smartwatches like the Samsung and Pebble platforms later this year and as soon as the platform is finalised they will be supporting Android Wear, with the team already looking at the initial SDK.
Dhiren Kulkarni, St.George CIO, recognises the extra accessability this will allow their customers saying :
The new smartwatch app will help to make banking quicker, easier and faster. Initially, we see the smartwatch app as a secondary device to a smartphone, allowing people to get quick information such as checking your account balance before making a purchase or getting directions to the nearest ATM.
Head of Mobile at St.George, Travis Tyler sees the advantage of second screens and the role they will play in the future :
The launch of the smartwatch app is incredibly exciting for us because it’s the start of a new wave of wearable technology. For St.George, it’s all about being in our customers’ eco-system and making sure we’re able to deliver a fast and simple option for people to do their banking on a range of devices.
There’s obviously a lot of anticipation in wearable technology at the St George bank, and if you’re a customer this is very good news.
Would this, or the news of further support for wearables enter into your consideration when choosing a bank?
Great, now if they’d catch up with Comm Bank and some of the other banks and offer tap and go payments on phones that would actually be useful for me.
Easily checking account balance, on the go, before making a purchase… Massively useful facility for those of us using StGeorge VISA Debit.
F*** thats nice, ANZ u must be sleeping right