05 May Commonwealth Bank Introduces Cardless ATM Withdrawals
First it was Tap & Pay and now it’s Cardless Cash.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, in a national first, will allow its customers to withdraw money from an ATM using only their smartphones. No card needed.
This functionality will be delivered via its CommBank app, under a new feature called “Cardless Cash”.
Users of the CommBank app simply open the app, go to the Cardless Cash feature and then select how much to withdraw.
They will then be presented with an 8 digit number of the homepage of the app and will be sent a different 4 digit number by SMS.
The codes are then entered into the Cardless Cash feature of the ATM which will then produce the specified amount of money.
While this technology gives us a view into the future, we won’t be seeing the end of keycards just yet.
There are some restrictions on this technology that will not allow it to completely replace an eftpos or credit card.
For security reasons, the app powered ATM withdrawals are limited to one per day and capped at $200. So users will still need to keep their cards handy.
This type of contactless payment/withdrawal technology does seem to be the way of the future. Westpac also announced last week that they will eventually be building Cardless cash functionality into their app.
In the meantime Westpac will be offering their customers another Cardless option.
In July, Westpac customers will be able to ring their customer service centre and request to withdraw money.
After identifying themselves, customers will be given a 6 digit number which, when entered in the ATM, will allow them to withdraw cash.
Like CBA, Westpac’s technology will not supersede cards just yet due to security restrictions.
The number of withdrawals is capped at three per day to a maximum total value of $1000. There is also a weekly limit of $2000.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia currently has 3000 ATMs and this feature is expected to be available on all of them when the Cardless Cash feature is live at the end of this month.
For those who already have the CommBank application, this new feature comes as an update they can install through the App Store for iOS or Playstore for Android. It unfortunately will not be available for Windows phones at this time and the possibility of future availability is unconfirmed.
The Westpac Cardless cash functionality is due to go live in September and is expected to be available on all Westpac ATMs.