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ANZ to kill non-iPhone mobile banking

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) will shut down its mobile banking service "M-Banking" effective 14 May.
Written by Ben Grubb, Contributor

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) will shut down its mobile banking service "M-Banking" effective 14 May.

ANZ's general manager of online banking Barry Trubridge wrote a letter last week to customers, sighted by ZDNet Australia, which said that the service would be discontinued.

"The functions offered by ANZ M-Banking are available through other existing services, including ANZ TXT Banking, ANZ Internet Banking and ANZ Phone Banking, which are simple and more widely used by our customers," Trubridge said in the letter.

From Friday, 14 May an "error message may appear" if a customer tried to access ANZ's M-Banking application on their phone, the letter said. "Effective from that date, we request you do not attempt to access or use ANZ M-Banking.

"We apologise for any inconvenience caused by these changes to ANZ's M-Banking service."

Apart from the "ANZ M-Banking" service, the bank also offers "ANZ Mobile Banking"; however, the service is only supported by Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch, according to ANZ's website.

In a statement from the company to ZDNet Australia today, ANZ attributed the termination of the service to "very low use".

"We've found that only about 0.6 per cent of our internet banking users use M-Banking, and most of what they use M-Banking for can be accessed from TXT or Internet Banking," the statement said.

The bank hinted at future investments it was making in enhancing mobile banking services.

"The major advances in smartphones over the last few years has also meant that our customers now want a service that is simpler and more useful than our current M-Banking service.

"Whilst we have decided to remove our M-Banking service, we are also investing in future enhancements to our mobile banking services that will deliver our customers an even better experience," it said in the statement.

The move follows ANZ trialling an Apple iPhone app for merchants called ePOS.

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