More customers go mobile-only

For a growing number of retail banking customers, mobile banking is now the only way they regularly interact with their bank.

Commonwealth Bank, which has 5.1 million NetBank customers of which 2.7 million use the CommBank app, reported in April that for 57 per cent of those customers mobile was their only "digital touchpoint" with the bank.

Six months on that number has grown to 64 per cent. Customers are making four million payments a week worth A$2.4 billion using the CommBank app.

CBA executive general manager for the digital channel, Lisa Frazier, said customers were adapting very quickly to new features the bank added to its app.

"We did not anticipate the pace of the trend," Frazier said.

In April the bank launched cardless cash (which allows customers to use their app to arrange an ATM withdrawal) and lock and limit (which allows customers to use the app to apply control settings to their credit cards).

Frazier said customers had withdrawn $55 million using the cardless cash facility since its launch. Use of cardless cash is limited to one transaction per day, worth up to $200.

"What we are finding is that customers use it in the evening when they go out. They take their mobile with them but leave their wallet at home, whether for convenience or security," Frazier said.

"They are also using it in moments of crisis, such as when they have forgotten their wallet."

Frazier said lock and limit was proving useful as a fraud detection and prevention tool. The bank's security department uses it to contact customers when someone attempts a type of transaction that the customer has blocked.

Using lock and limit, customers have the option of blocking card-not-present transactions outside Australia, in-store payments outside Australia, and ATM cash advances. They can set a dollar limit per transaction, and timers to control when the settings are switched on and off.

"We had a customer who did some shopping and then discovered that the merchant's system had been compromised. The customer put a lock on," Frazier said.

The bank is continuing to add features to the app. Most recently it has added a scheduled payments function.

The next feature to be available will be international transfers. It is also moving push notifications (the codes customers are sent to complete transactions when a new payee is involved) from SMS to the app.