Rise And Fall Of Internet Banking

Would you trust your money with an electronic banking system? If you had a million dollars to move from one account into another account would you trust the click of a button or would you prefer to go into your bank and personally interface with a client service representative?

These are some of the questions that people consider when their bank begins to advertise internet banking services.

Although the ability to transact business and perform transactions with your bank online has been around as far back as 1998 the general public is not as enthusiastic as most bankers would like them to be. Even savvy technology consumers are cautious when it comes to the dollar and moving it "virtually" rather than seeing a physical paper transaction.

I did a quick survey of my co workers, all 25 of them to find out what was their take on the phenomenon of internet banking. Some were not knowledgeable about the service whilst those who knew it existed were pure skeptics in the system and were content with queuing at the bank rather than trusting their hard earned cash to some electronic marvel that could possibly misplace their monies. I also extended my questioning to online transactions such as purchasing clothes, movies, books and music discs and found that most people were unwilling to unleash their credit card data on a website.

Although my small survey was unscientific it gives me a good feel for what the average Joe thinks of this electronic labyrinth we have entered into.

Internet banking as the name suggests is a form of banking that utilizes the internet and World Wide Web services. Internet banking technology utilizes secure means of transferring data or instructions from the account holder's personal computer into the bank's mainframe computer system. Typical transactions would include bill payments, transferring of funds between accounts and making applications. The transactions are real time and most transactions occur as soon as the user performs the command. Apart from transactional data, users in some systems are allowed to run reports, retrieve historic records, stop payments, check balances and so on. Within recent times the range of services has expanded to ensure competitiveness but more importantly to lure the skeptic account holder into using the service. Wells Fargo, a leader in web based banking recently added the ability of account holders to change their address online, request a statement, order travelers cheques and foreign currency for next day delivery.