Customers of Westpac will soon be able to call up access to their bank applications on Apple and Samsung mobile devices by logging in with a fingerprint.
Westpac customers will be able to use Apple's fingerprint sensor, Touch ID, to securely sign in to the bank’s new digital banking platform Westpac Live on their iPhone, and will be the first in the world to use fingerprint sign-in for the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Note 4.
Westpac Live was launched in May last year in an initiative designed to bring a common interface to all of the bank's customer facing applications across PC, laptop and mobile devices.
Jason Yetton, group executive, Westpac Retail, says the introduction of the new fingepring technology in January next year is the next step in moving forward Westpac Live, which has so far been used by over 2.9m customers to manage their accounts on the move
“Over half of our digitally active customers are using mobile banking and now doing more than $50 billion worth of transactions each year," she says. "Our customers are increasingly demanding a greater end-to-end experience and greater consistency when accessing their bank accounts via their mobile, their iPad, their PC and we are constantly innovating to deliver this."
With this in mind, she says the bank will roll out a number of new features via the Live site over the coming months, including the ability to share access to accounts with others, view accounts in foreign currency, and more self-service options.