Mobile Internet banking

I used to deal with the ANZ Bank exclusively. They helped out in 1990 when our current mortgage holder, Westpac Bank, weren't interesting in helping us buy a new house. ANZ had it all sorted out in a handful of days and we got the house we wanted. In those days there was virtually no commercial Internet access. I was about to sign up for an Actrix BBS account and Actrix was the only BBS in NZ offering a Unix shell account on a system connected to the Net to anyone willing to pay the $160-ish annual fee. But I hadn't done that yet and almost no one knew what the Internet was.....though the possibilities were obvious enough to those who did.

When Internet banking did come along, I was happy enough with the ANZ. Their service worked fine with Mozilla on Linux over a dial-up connection. It worked even better with a cable modem after 1996 in Kapiti.

We had a few heart-stopping hiccups with the ANZ between 1998 and 2003. At times it seemed we were explaining to their staff how their jobs should be done. We started thinking maybe we should look around for a new bank.

The ANZ has made some improvements to it's online service since then, but in many ways it hasn't changed much.

A few years later, Kiwibank appeared and we opened a set of accounts with them, but the main banking stayed with the ANZ right up to 2007 as they held the mortgages on our properties over that time.

Using both banks, I had a good chance to compare the online (and other) services of the two. Generally, the ANZ is more restrictive. Their interface is more "busy". The words they use to give names to things require you to interpret their meaning with respect to what you're trying to do...if you can. You also couldn't set up a new bill payer without a call to their 0800 number.

Kiwibank have a very simple, straight forward layout and use words that make it more obvious what things will do and how you might get things done. They also let you define billers online and each known biller has a 'wizard' on each field, tailored to that biller, to assist you in entering the information required. All the majors are there: local councils, power, phone, insurance companies and other major goods and service suppliers.

ANZ limited "Pay Anyone" transactions to $5000 / day without special approval. Kiwibank has no limit that ever got in my way.

ANZ limited onkine access to tranaction history to just a few months. Kiwibank gives you access to everything. I recently looked at transactions going back to 2004.

But what really separates them in a big way today, for me, is the mobile Internet banking. ANZ require you to download a Java application onto your phone and to call them to request access to the mobile service. You can access ANZ's "M-Banking" from one phone only and no other.

Kiwibank doesn't require you to do anything special. I use my (HTC Magic "Android") phone's web browser to access the online services via both the standard page or the mobile version. The same applies to my Apple iPod Touch.

The contrast between the two banks offers one insights into the apparent level of commitment to delivering an excellent online banking service to customers.

The ANZ doesn't do a bad job. Compared to Canadian banks, the ANZ is FAR better! But Kiwibank is better still...and by a growing margin if the comparison of mobile banking - the lastest "new" thing" - is any measure.