The arrival of internet banking has changed the way we view banking and bankers. Many have heaved a sigh of relief to be able to say goodbye to being a slave of banking hours, queuing and form filling.
1969 marked the end of an era when the first Automated Telling Machine was introduced to the world. Until that time financial transaction only happened inside the banks with the help of a human teller. The ATM ushered in an era where we could draw cash and deposit checks without entering a bank.
The next big step came approximately 25 years later with the huge growth of the world-wide-web. For the first time, it was now possible to perform a range of banking functions without ever leaving home. All that was needed was a banking account and a PC with internet access.
Security became of utmost importance as online fraudsters jumped on the technological bandwagon and tried, sometimes successfully, to access the accounts of the banks’ clients. Sophisticated encryption techniques were employed to protect data to and from the client. An account number and password are needed to access the account and sometimes a second password with only some random characters of the password being requested. This was to ensure that even if some unscrupulous person obtained parts of the password, they still would not have the full password.
Of course, a password is of no value unless it is secret. One of the common mistakes people make when inventing a password is to use names of family or pets or dates of birth as a password. These are easily guessed and should not be used. Passwords should be a combination of letters, numbers and symbols with a mix of upper and lower case and should be at least 8 characters long. The banks also advise that passwords should be changed at regular intervals.
There are very few transactions that you cannot perform online, with the exception of drawing cash. You can transfer funds from your checking account to pay your mortgage account, you can transfer money from your savings account to pay your credit card, you can pay your phone bill, transfer money into your spouses account, stop payment on a check or order a new checkbook, set up a regular debit order, apply for a loan or overdraft and get statements, sorted any way you wish, downloaded to your PC in a variety of formats.
No longer are we bound by the banks’ hours and we no longer need to travel to the bank, with the attendant frustrations of traffic. We now do our transacting when it suits us without having to be anywhere near a bank.
Will the time come when there are no human tellers? Probably not; some people prefer dealing with a human and others have no faith in sophisticated technology.
The banks also benefit from the increasing use of internet banking. Staff that previously were tied up with routine tasks like printing statements are now freed up to perform other functions. The banks also save on staff costs by being able to reduce staff numbers as clients increasingly perform many tasks for themselves.
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