MasterCard's global chief innovation officer, Garry Lyons, said earlier this month that the launch of Android Pay could be more significant for the future payments infrastructure than Apple Pay given the myriad devices they would work on in comparison to Apple's.

In an interview at the opening of ANZ's new Martin Place branch – which resembles one of Apple's retail stores with its three-storey glass frontage, light timber interior, feature staircase and elevated tables for customers to explore products – Mr Ohlsson said ANZ was close to revealing a new contactless, merchant terminal. It will be launched in the second half of this calendar year.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia was the first of the major banks to create its own modern, eftpos terminal with its Albert device, built with Wincor Nixdorf. So far, there are 25,000 Alberts in circulation, compared to around 800,000 point of sale terminals in Australia. The Albert is a wireless, seven-inch Android tablet with touch screen.

But Mr Ohlsson suggested that the new ANZ device would be smaller than an iPad and could be worn in a holster. "We think it will be more relevant and usable [than Albert] but time will tell," Mr Ohlsson said. "In a restaurant or on a shop floor, you might not want to carry a tablet around with you, but if you have something in a holster then it is with you the whole time.

"We are talking to lots of large retailers about that now. Everything we do now has to be mobile, and it has to be contactless," he said.