Having pioneered mobile banking in 2010, with its goMoney app for iPhones, ANZ is now looking to refresh its reputation as a technology innovator.The bank announced a slew of new consumer applications and small business systems yesterday, and a contactless payments trial. ANZ also hinted that it was leaning towards biometric access control - most likely involving fingerprint scanning or voice biometrics - in two to three years' time.Mobile banking has become one of the fastest growing opportunities in the financial sector, on the back of the rapid consumer adoption of smartphones and tablet computers. According to Frost & Sullivan, 68 per cent of Australians aged 16 to 65 now own a smartphone. And 20 per cent of this age group own a tablet.  For the banks, each of these devices is a potential bank portal.A Newspoll survey conducted for the ANZ found that 88 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds now prefer to use digital technology to conduct the majority of their banking, and three-quarters of older Australians also opt for digital rather than physical access. While goMoney is now being used by 750,000 ANZ customers, and accounts for five million transactions a month, Phil Chronican, the bank's Australian chief executive, said that in-branch transactions were declining by four to five per cent a year.Despite this trend, the bank said that for the big ticket items customers still prefer a face-to-face meeting. Responding to this, the bank announced yesterday that it was rolling out Cisco video-conferencing to 43 of its remote branches.ANZ also announced a small internal trial of a contactless payment system. It has negotiated with Optus to allow it to write banking details to the secure element of the Optus SIM card on a Samsung Galaxy 3 phone which is equipped with Near Field Communications technology.Users will be able to make payments of up to A$100 by simply waving the phone over a PayWave or PayPass terminal. Both the Commonwealth Bank and Westpac have or are working on contactless payments apps using smartphones, leaving just NAB to show its NFC hand.ANZ plans to release the NFC Mobile Wallet system for its customers in 2013.While the Mobile Wallet is aimed squarely at consumers, ANZ also unveiled FastPay, a free app that works on iPhones and iPads that lets businesses collect debit or credit card details up until 6.30pm, and then have those funds appear in their accounts on the same day. However, the bank has yet to release a dongle that would plug into the phone or tablet to allow users to simply swipe their cards - details still need to be manually inputted into the phone or tablet.