ASB says customers will be able to receive real time payment notifications on Samsung smartwatches from July.
The bank has released a video promoting the service.
Russell Jones, ASB's executive general manager of technology and innovation, says from next month customers will be able to receive real time notification of payments on a Samsung Galaxy Gear 2 smartwatch, which will operate over a Bluetooth connection to an Android phone. The wearer will be able to click through on the smartwatch and see payment details and delete the notification, says Jones.
He told interest.co.nz the technology behind the notification sending could be incorporated into other "smart" wearable devices such as wristbands and Goggle Glasses.
And in terms of what other services ASB customers may be offered via smart devices, Jones says other things are being looked at.
"That's still a debate and we're trying a few things and working through various use cases to see whether things make sense," says Jones. "The notifications one is a very obvious one."
"I have a Pebble (smart)watch and I hardly ever look at my phone during the day because it's much easier for me to leave my phone in my pocket and look down at my wrist and see the messages around text messages or notifications of meetings that I've got to go to or phone calls coming in, or whatever it is. It's more using it as a complementary device at the moment rather than actually writing a whole lot of functionality to run on the wearable device itself."
"Whether that moves on, we're testing a few things, we're trying a few things out, we're talking to customers and focus groups, (but) nothing hugely obvious jumps out at the moment," Jones says.
However, he suggests wearable devices are potentially an important part of the future of banking..
Westpac launched a service that lets customers get up to date balances on smartwatches last November. It claimed this was the first banking app to be launched on a smartwatch in Australasia, "if not the world." This "Cash Tank" app was launched on Sony smartwatches linking to android devices.
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