St George Bank, a Westpac subsidiary, today is expected to unveil a new smartwatch banking app, along with plans for a future banking app that will work on Google Glass.
St George chief information officer Dhiren Kulkarni has claimed the smartwatch app will be the first by any Australian bank. It will reportedly work initially with Sony’s SmartWatch 2, pictured, but other versions are being developed for Samsung’s Gear wearables as well as other smartwatch models.
But at this stage users will not be able to make transactions via their watches. In its initial form the app will be limited to displaying account balances and listing nearby ATMs and St George branches.
“In my opinion, in order to do financial transactions, it will be at least a year or two years away, when you have good enough biometric security . We know it could actually be done already, but the security is not there yet,” Kulkarni told the Australian Financial Review.
