Bank of Facebook: CBA Katching app to allow you bank on social networks and iPhone-to iPhone.
CBA’s Kaching app, which lets customers make mobile payments, is now “the world-first” social payments app.
Commonwealth Bank has announced it will launch CommBank Kaching for Facebook later this year, making it possible for customers to do “all their banking” via the network.
Katching for Facebook users can view their balances, transactions, make payments (to Facebook friends, mobile numbers and email addresses), BPAY payments and third party transfers – secured by NetCode SMS.
Launched for iPhones first, the innovative app lets you make payments to others using a person’s mobile phone or email address. It has just landed on 13 Android mobile devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S3.
However, so far the app has only been rated 1.9/5 by early downloaders on Google Play, and branded “half baked.”
In addition, Apple iPhone users can now ‘bump’ each other, which will allow money to be exchanged or a payment to be made by tapping two phones together.
Check out the video here.
So, if you’re splitting the bill at dinner or paying someone back, bumping makes it way easier.
However, payments made by Bumping phones will only be made available to Apple iPhone users running iOS4.2 and up only, so older iPhones are out of luck.
And what about ‘bump’ for Android?
Near-Field Communication (NFC) payments and ‘Bump’ for the green man will be available when more smartphones come equipped with NFC technology, as there are currently just a handful of NFC ready smartphones in Oz to date.
The Katching app has had $1 bn in transfers since launch, CBA said yesterday.
“The power of Facebook for payments is only now becoming clear. It will change banking for consumers and for small business – providing hundreds of thousands of merchants in Australia with full payments systems access,” said David Lindberg, Retail Strategy, Commonwealth Bank.
Lindberg says the CBA will regularly expand the functionality of CommBank app.
“The payments landscape continues to transform the banking industry, I am convinced we are only at the beginning and the future will be extraordinary.”
