Remember when you took your moneybox into the bank – excited at the prospect of getting a new one from the person behind a counter you could barely see? If nothing else, Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s CIO, David Whiteing, is looking well into the future when imagining what your account might look like as we head towards the end of the decade.

Speaking at the Australian Information Industry Association lunch in Sydney yesterday, Mr Whiteing described a brave vision of future banking, particularly in relation to what might actually be IN your account. 

CBA CIO, David Whiteing

"I have a view that a bank account will become a storer of value, rather than a storer of currency value, so why can't a bank account be used to store loyalty points in the same way that you can use the slider on a Qantas website to decide whether you are paying with points or dollars?"

"We have multi-currency bank accounts today, with 15 currencies available on your phone instantly in real-time, so it is not that difficult for us to take that technology and make that a loyalty point store. It shouldn't be that difficult for us to then add crypto-currencies to it, and whatever other means of payment transfers people might want."

To achieve this, Whiteing is looking at Ripple, a global payments and currency management system that is already achieving a successful level of market penetration.

Whiteing also states that given the current Commbank accounts can handle 15 different currencies, who shouldn’t you be able to place frequent flyer points and Bitcoin into the same account? With Qantas’ loyalty programme so pervasive through the broader economy, it’s not a huge step to imagine a time when they could be traded like any other currency.

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