ANZ adds lost card feature to digital wallets

Customers can spend on virtual card while they wait for replacement

ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott and managing director products Katherine Bray

ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott and managing director products Katherine Bray

ANZ bank will automatically update customers’ digital wallets with replacement card details if they report one lost or stolen.

“Our customers report about 670,000 cards as lost or stolen each year and we know waiting for a new card to arrive can be a real inconvenience,” said Katherine Bray, ANZ managing director products.

“Now our customers can keep using their digital wallet, whether it’s Apple Pay or Android Pay, to make purchases while they wait for the new physical card to arrive in the mail.”

When a customer calls to report a missing card, the bank blocks it before updating the digital wallet with their new virtual replacement card. The bank is also allowing customers to keep their existing PIN with the digital replacement.

The feature has been heralded as a step towards digital-only cards. Currently, digital wallets contain virtual cards that also have a physical form.

“For many customers their smartphone is now the primary way they do their banking, including making purchases, so we’re working hard to keep improving their mobile experience with changes like this,” Bray said.

The bank said that around 8.3 million transactions were made across the bank’s digital wallets last year.

Displacing plastic

Speaking last year ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott said mobile payments were set to supersede card and cash as the preferred payment method in Australia in the near future.

"I see a future where [mobile payment methods] will displace plastic,” the CEO said. “This is not very far away — the technology already exists today. We could get you a card and have it only sit on your phone.

“It’s a realistic aspiration that’s not very far away. We’re not talking in ten years - were talking in a much shorter period of time than that.”

Despite being the last of the Big Four banks to offer mobile payments, ANZ has been making strong plays in the digital wallet space.

Last year it became the first Australian bank to offer its customers the ability to pay for purchases using Apple Pay. The bank’s main competitors – Commonwealth Bank of Australia, NAB and Westpac – are yet to follow suit, and are instead seeking Australian Competition and Consumer Commission authorisation to engage in collective bargaining with Apple and potentially a boycott of Apple Pay.

In March the bank appointed Google’s former managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Maile Carnegie, to head up its digital banking division. ANZ’s chief information officer Scott Collary departed in November as part of changes to the technology function at the bank which saw Gerard Florian appointed group executive technology.

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Tags fraudWestpacNABmobile bankingCommonwealth Bank of AustraliaANZmobile paymentsdigital walletShayne Elliott

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