Is St. George making phone-based NFC bank cards?

One of Australia’s banks may be working on a new way to pay, and if you have a phone that features Near-Field Communication, you won’t need to take out your card again.

Unnamed sources within St. George Bank have told GadgetGuy this week that the financial institution is working on a new way of paying that incorporates account information on a mobile phone SIM card, allowing customers to pay for goods and services at an EFTPOS terminal using smartphones.

We’re told that St. George is currently testing the system with Samsung Galaxy S3 handsets, and that when activated, customers with NFC equipped smartphones will be able to use these devices in way similar to the PayWave technology that currently exists on Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards.

Checking with St. George’s official channels on this, representatives for the bank told GadgetGuy that “there isn’t anything [they] can talk about at the moment.”

St. George wouldn’t be the first bank to be embracing Near-Field Communication, though, with the Commonwealth Bank creating an iPhone 4/4S compatible case utilising the technology for payments in late 2011.

Here’s hoping we see something official on this shortly.