The Commonwealth Bank outed its Kaching near-field communications product for payments way back in 2011, and since then all seems to have gone quiet around the whole idea of paying for stuff with your phone, until now.
Kaching is an app that lets you pay for stuff at contactless EFTPOS terminals, much like you would with a Visa payWave- or Mastercard PayPass-enabled bank card. You aren’t able to use the NFC built-into your phone — mostly because iPhone doesn’t have it and Android manufacturers don’t want to co-operate — so instead you have to use a case that CommBank sell for around $50.
Kaching came out with a bang for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S in 2011 with a case to boot, and then the software was ported to Android over a year later (with no capacity for NFC payments).
Turns out, however, that the CBA hasn’t gone soft on NFC payments for phones.
Commbank’s chief information officer, Michael Harte, told us yesterday that the Kaching team is working hard with the folks from iCarte — the people who make Kaching cases — to get one out onto the market for the iPhone 5.
The software has been updated for iPhone 5 in the store and now all the bank needs to do is get the physical case out there. Watch this space, we’re told.