Here’s a new spin on going mobile-first: St. George Bank, the first Australian bank to launch online banking, back in 1995, is dropping the service, and replacing it with … a version of its mobile banking platform.
The bank, whose symbol is a fire-breathing cartoon dragon, seems to look at innovation with deadly seriousness. ZDNet quotes the bank’s CIO, Dhiren Kulkarni on the primacy of mobile:
“Currently, people have online teams, their mobile team, an Android mobile team, and an Apple mobile team, but I think the industry is changing so fast and so quick you just want to be in a position to cope and continue. So we have to change our strategy where we will be mobile-only,” he said.
“We will have our first implementation for tablet in October 2014, a second mobile implementation in March 2015, and then desktop sometime in 2015, so we’ll have it as one system altogether.
“We were the first bank to introduce online in Australia, and we’ll be the first bank to decommission it also.”
The bank is also implementing beacon technology to communicate with customers’ smartphones in two of its Sydney branches, according to the report. St George also has a Google Glass app in production, and a smartwatch app in the wild.
Ok, we’re impressed.