Westpac spruces up digital wares as apps arms race escalates

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“If you’re poor in digital you’re just poor. There’s no longer this idea that ‘I’ve got a great physical bank with a fantastic branch network, and oh, over here I’ve got an app for those few people who are digitally savvy.’ That’s gone,” de Bruin said.

Commonwealth Bank, which is Westpac’s biggest rival and regarded as the technology leader of the big four, has invested heavily in using its app to provide customers with personal financial insights, as well as promoting deals on behalf of its business clients.

In another sign of the technology battle underway between banks, ANZ on Wednesday said its recently launched digital platform ANZ Plus had obtained $500 million in deposits since launching, and had 40,000 customers. ANZ has been heavily promoting the platform and paying more competitive interest rates, as it tries to attract deposits.

After the Reserve Bank last week raised official interest rates by 0.5 percentage points, ANZ said it would increase savings account rates on the Plus app by 0.3 percentage points to 3 per cent. Over this month and August, this product has increased savings rates in line with the RBA’s changes to official rates.

Westpac says it has 5 million digitally active customers, and de Bruin said rolling out the new features in its app would be a key step forward in Westpac’s digital strategy.

Westpac said it also planned to introduce features that will allow customers to view accounts held with other banks through the app, as the industry gears up for customers to gradually make use of the data-sharing regime known as “open banking.”

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