St.George Bank says its Australian-first roll-out of smartwatch banking has been a great success following its Sony Smartwatch 2 app earlier this year, now it comes to the Samsung Gear 2 today, the Pebble later this year and the Apple Watch in 2015.
Smartwatch banking is gearing up to be an everyday reality for smartwatch owners with St.George Bank today launching a new app for the Samsung Gear 2, allowing customers to view their balance and get directions to their nearest ATM or branch from the screen of their watch.
Available to download now from the Google Play store, the new smartwatch app pairs with Samsung smartphones and the Gear 2 and also get SMS alerts and emails with details of key deposits and withdrawals on the watch.
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Travis Tyler, head of mobile at St.George said the take-up of mobile banking on smartwatches has been a great success and will naturally increase as more devices are launched to the market.
Mr Tyler added: “It has been our plan to progressively roll-out a smartwatch banking capability to a number of different watches in the market following the Australian-first launch of this technology on the Sony Smartwatch 2 in April this year by St.George.
“Within our own customer base, we’re seeing the popularity of Android devices continue to increase so it makes absolute sense for us to deliver more capability for customers using this platform. In fact, St.George customers are now just as likely to own an Android device as they are an iPhone,” he said.
Pebble owners will get a similar app later this year with St.George saying it will “also investigate opportunities to collaborate with Apple’s smartwatch.”
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