Nvidia is entering the market for smart-phone chips.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
The days of restrictive banking hours have long since passed, and now you can add smart phone apps to a growing list of technologies that have made it easier to access your accounts - any time, any place.
The applications offered by several of Canada's big banks give users an ever-growing range of options including checking balances, transferring money between accounts and paying bills.
At CIBC, the bank has a basic banking application and a second to help potential home buyers.
The Home Adviser application can be linked to a smart phone's GPS and will show the average property value in a neighbourhood as well as the trend for prices in a region.
It will also give prospective home buyers basic demographic and real estate statistics for a neighbourhood as well as calculators to determine mortgage payments, and affordability.
"It's an app that you can have in your hand when you're out looking at a home or shopping for a property and it really gives you access to real-time advice and information while you're in the home that you might be considering," said Geoff Dillon, CIBC's senior director of retail markets.
"You're able to access right away what's been going on in a neighbourhood, if the value has been trending up or down."
Experts say users need to remember to take the same precautions when they do their banking on their phone as when they are online, standing at an ATM or when they do any financial transaction.
Sharad Ojha, head of RBC's mobile banking strategy, said the Royal Bank offer the same guarantees to users of their application that they offer their website users.
But that doesn't mean users should be complacent.
Among the first things he recommends users do is require a password to be entered before their smart phone can be used and to remember to properly log out when they are finished.
"Don't leave the banking app running," Mr. Ojha says.
Mr. Ojha also said users should call their bank if they lose their smart phone so that the bank can change their account settings to prevent fraud.
Queen's University computer science professor Roel Vertegaal suggested users who connect to the Internet over public WiFi connections, like those found in coffee shops and libraries, should be cautious.
"When you're choosing your WiFi choose carefully, there are a number of viruses out there that will produce bogus WiFi networks that are free," he said.
"They typically don't give you a signal, in the sense that they don't give you Internet when you connect to them, but they may be scanning your data."
Users need to take simple precautions like never giving out password information or storing it somewhere that others may have access, Mr. Vertegaal said.
"You can set the iPhone to wipe itself after 10 failed password attempts, which is way more secure than if you just let people try without any boundaries," he said.
But he said the risks of banking with a smart phone application must be kept in context and the likelihood of someone stealing your credit card information or your bank card information by other means is probably much greater than the them stealing it off your smart phone.
"At gas stations and sometimes even at ATMs there are skimming devices that will take your number and your pass code because they will put up a camera and they'll know exactly what pin code you're typing in," he said.