The Commonwealth Bank has launched its smartphone banking app Kaching as a social app that can be accessed from within Facebook.
Customers can make payments to Facebook Events, and gift payments to friends and family from within the social network for special events such as birthdays.
“Australia’s 12 million Facebook users more ways to bank, including world-first payment options, without ever needing to leave the world’s largest social platform,” the bank said.
Commbank also announced updates to the smartphone version of the Kaching app.
The new Facebook app lets the bank’s customers make payments to their Facebook friends, or anyone with a mobile number or email address.
Customers can also post payment requests for joint birthday presents and holidays on their friends’ timeline or by private message.
Other functions include viewing an account balance and transaction history, transferring funds between accounts and viewing peer-to-peer payment and requests history, the bank said.
"With Facebook popularity skyrocketing to more than 55 per cent of the population in Australia, we know our customers, particularly Facebook’s core user base of 18-35 year olds, are looking for new ways to connect their banking and their lives, friends and causes inside Facebook,” said the bank’s Chief Marketing and Online Officer Andy Lark.
Facebook is the third platform to host the Kaching app. Last year the bank released an Android version of Kaching and extended its iPhone app capability so that account holders could exchange money by bumping their phones together.
It also became possible for customers from other banks to collect payments using Kaching.
More than 6.5 million of CommBank's customers were online and more than 2.5 million customers accessed banking via mobile platforms.
