NAB blows Kiss to mobile payments competitors

National Australia Bank is piloting a mobile payments application with staff, as it prepares to launch its answer to ANZ’s GoMoney and the Commonwealth Bank’s Kaching product.

The bank showcased the technology to analysts at today’s technology update in Sydney.

Dubbed internally as ‘Kiss”, the application will allow users to send and receive money using email, SMS, QR Code, and for Android devices, near-field communications (NFC).

NAB said the 90-day trial has involved 1000 staff, as well as merchants in NAB’s commercial buildings.

The Commonwealth Bank’s Kaching application, which is available on both the iOS and Android platforms, allows consumers to make payments to their peers with their mobile phone number or email address.

It relies heavily on the bank being able to process payments in real time.

NAB head of enterprise transformation Adam Bennett today told analysts NAB had already moved to real-time payments and seven-day settlements.

“We do NAB to NAB real-time, we do other banks to NAB throughout the day,” he said.

Bennett added that competition in the merchant services business was fierce, and said the bank was looking to leverage the partnership it signed with electronic payments provider VeriFone to help it innovate on payments.

NAB recently revealed 50 percent of the 1.3 million internet banking logins it received every day came in via a mobile device.