Westpac New Zealand will shortly launch what it described as the world's first banking app for account management using augmented reality.It's a grandiose description for what amounts to a cute data visualisation tool allowing users to see a three-dimensional representation of their spending habits, upcoming bills and loyalty point balance, but nevertheless it cements the bank's growing reputation as a technology innovator.In May Westpac NZ signed an open-ended collaboration and innovation deal with Samsung to explore how that company's technology could be integrated with the bank's systems. It had already announced that it was testing a system allowing people to use their fingerprint to log into internet banking from a Samsung Galaxy S5. The bank also has a Google Glass banking application ready to roll out as soon as the technology is launched locally.The bank's chief digital officer, Simon Pomeroy, said Westpac NZ wanted to be "the number one digital bank in New Zealand and globally."He said that, although the bank's capital budget had not changed, chief executive Peter Clare had "diverted investment from the physical to the digital" since his appointment two years ago.A recent trip to Silicon Valley by Clare and Pomeroy along with a handful of other executives had further convinced the bank of the need to "disrupt our own processes and the way we engage with customers," according to Pomeroy.He said that the release of Westpac NZ's new online banking platform, slated for September, would allow a rash of other applications to be rolled out. He said that the "device agnostic" banking platform was designed to allow any online banking currently available from a desktop personal computer to be completed from a tablet or smartphone, and also support 90 per cent of what was currently done through a branch - including originating loans.