ANZ will soon make a form of mobile phone-based banking available to customers,
The Australian reported.
The newspaper reported that ANZ was trialling the service among a small group of customers and plans to promote the service more widely in the next couple of weeks.
Mobile banking of a kind is, and has been, available to any customer with a mobile phone since the introduction of phone-based banking a decade or so ago, though this service has largely been restricted to transfers between linked accounts at one institution, balance inquiries and some history.
The ANZ service, which may be the first of its kind in Australia, represents a step forward in that customers will be able to make "pay anyone" transfers (available at present through internet banking, and still subject to overnight batch processing) as well as to order short statements and to create alerts on transactions.
At this stage ANZ's website says there are no fees for the duration of the pilot.
In New Zealand, where ANZ has offered this service for a couple of years, ANZ charges an access fee of NZ$2 a month on top of existing account charges.