Westpac's underwhelming new iPad app

Westpac put on a big media show in Sydney yesterday to launch its new iPad mobile banking application, but the event fell flat when the app wouldn't load.

Surprisingly, the iPad version can't do all the things the bank's iPhone app can, such as create a new payee.

Westpac's chief information officer, Clive Whincup, said the service would be upgraded progressively.

He said the emphasis in designing a mobile banking interface for the iPad was to make full use of the iPad's capabilities. For instance, the app has some nifty drag-and-drop and tap features for managing payments and transfers.

Westpac has 3.4 million active online customers - 1.4 million of them use mobile phones for access.

Whincup said the three most common uses of mobile banking facilities were to check account balances, to move money between accounts and to make a payment.

"Those three things make up 80 per cent of the things people do with their mobile banking service," Whincup said.

The app has been available on the Apple App Store for over a week and has been downloaded 14,000 times.

The application is not available in an Android tablet format.