Australia’s third-largest bank, Australia and New Zealand
Banking Group (ANZ Bank), has launched a mobile phone banking
service that it stressed in a release marks the first time a
service of this kind would be available to the Australian market.
The service, said ANZ Group’s personal division managing director,
Brian Hartzer, is modelled on successful mobile phone banking
platforms overseas.

ANZ’s comprehensive mobile banking service enables its customers
to make payments and transfer funds from their mobile phone, as
well as to check account balances. An additional new service, TXT
Banking, enables customers to check account balances and receive
mini statements for up to three accounts at any time via short
message service. The service, which is available on all mobile
communication networks in Australia, will be supplied free until
the end of this year, following which ANZ said it will review the
cost of the service.

The introduction of mobile phone banking in Australia follows
what ANZ Bank said was its successful launch of the service in
early 2007 in New Zealand. According to ANZ Bank, mobile phone
banking in New Zealand has proved to be popular with customers aged
25 years or less and people who wanted to closely monitor their
account balances.

“More than 95 percent of Australians have a mobile phone so
providing mobile phone banking is just another way we are making it
more convenient and simple for our customers to do their banking,”
said Hartzer. “Australia also has one of the highest rates of
technology adoption in the world, so we expect there will be demand
for this service.”

Hopefully, his optimism will prove well founded. This was not
true of the Australian unit of US bank Citibank and local mobile
phone service provider Telstra, which joined forces to launch a
mobile banking service in May 2005. Due to a lack of demand the
service was terminated in June 2006. At the time of the launch,
Citibank enthusiastically cited research that among other positives
indicated 25 percent of Australian mobile phone users were likely
to use their phone to pay bills and 24 percent were likely to
transfer funds.