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CBA story

Australian-first bill pay with mobile phone camera and account opening in two minutes

Bill pay with your mobile phone camera

01 June 2016

In an Australian first, customers with an Apple iPhone 5 or above can now be use their phone’s camera to pay their bills by simply taking a photo of it using the CommBank app.

Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, the app will then prepopulate the BPAY fields, making bill paying quicker and easier.

Pete Steel, Executive General Manager, Digital, Commonwealth Bank, said the new the functionality will be piloted with customers as we experiment with new ways to make banking easier for customers.

“This new approach of testing and refining with customers is reflective of the way we like to work to innovate. We want to ensure we’re not innovating just for the sake of it.”

Paying bills, particularly new bills, can be a cumbersome experience as you need to manually input a number of fields such as the Biller Code and Reference Number. This can lead to human error and unnecessary frustration.

“This new functionality in the CommBank app aims to not only ensure fewer mistakes, but it will give our customers a much easier way to pay their bills. This is the next evolution of the digital wallet and it places the power of mobile technology in the hands of even more Australians,” he said.

CommBank has bought another new innovation to its app, designed to give new customers to CommBank a simple and convenient mobile experience right from their first interaction with the Bank. 

New to bank customers are able to download the CommBank app and open a transaction account within a couple of minutes without needing to go into branch or make a phone call, as long as they have the required identification on-hand. 

Also, they can instantly transfer money from other bank accounts to CommBank and straight into their new account, allowing them the convenience of using Cardless Cash and Tap&Pay (Android only) instantly.  

“We are focused on giving our customers the best technological experience using our products. From being able to set up a transaction account and immediately use Cardless Cash, to being able to pay their bills using a smartphone camera, we are focused on continually delivering innovative payment features through the CommBank app,” Pete Steel said.

The account opening service is available on the updated CommBank app on both Android and Apple iOS. The new bill payment functionality is only currently available to customers using Apple iOS 5 and above.

Find out more about how to pay your bill with your mobile.