ING Direct puts account balance on iPhone home screen

ING Direct has utilised the newly open widget function in Apple's iOS 8 mobile operating system to allow its customers to view their bank balance direct from their smartphone's home screen.

A long-time feature of the Android operating system, Apple first brought limited widgets to its own mobile OS with iOS 5.

Widgets on iOS remained restricted to built-in apps and services - such as weather and calendar - until iOS 8, which debuted last year.

iOS 8 opened up the feature to third-party apps and developers through Apple's new 'extensibility' function, which allows developers to extend their apps into the notification centre and other areas.

ING Direct today said it had taken advantage of the change in approach to introduce what it is calling "one swipe banking".

Its customers with Apple devices running iOS 8 will now be able to check their transaction account, savings, mortgage and superannuation balances from the home screen, without having to launch the mobile banking app.

It follows from the bank's introduction of pre-login balance checking on its mobile app, which ING Direct as well as the Commonwealth Bank, Westpac and others have all leapt on in recent years.

ING Direct said it was working to bring the same home screen balance functionality to customers using the Android platform. It also today debuted an app for the Apple Watch.

A number of other Australian banks have offered the functionality on Android devices for a number of years.

Westpac said it was looking at rolling out widget balance functionality on ios 8 iPhones and Android in this calendar year.