Online banking (or Internet banking or E-banking) allows customers of a financial institution to conduct financial transactions on a secure website operated by the institution, which can be a retail or virtual bank, credit union or building society.
To access a financial institution's online banking
facility, a customer having personal Internet access must register with the
institution for the service, and set up some password (under various names) for
customer verification. The password for online banking is normally not the same
as for telephone banking. Financial institutions now routinely
allocate customer numbers (also under various names), whether or not customers
intend to access their online banking facility. Customer numbers are normally
not the same as account numbers, because a number of accounts can be linked to
the one customer number. The customer will link to the customer number any of
those accounts which the customer controls, which may be cheque, savings, loan,
credit card and other accounts. Customer numbers will also not be the same as
any debit or credit card issued by the financial institution to the customer.
To access online banking, the customer would go to the
financial institution's website, and enter the online banking facility using
the customer number and password. Some financial institutions have set up additional
security steps for access, but there is no consistency to the approach adopted.
Online
banking facilities offered by various financial institutions have many features
and capabilities in common, but also have some that are application specific.
The common features fall broadly into several categories
A
bank customer can perform some non-transactional tasks through online banking,
including -
- viewing account
balances
·
viewing recent transactions
- downloading bank
statements, for example in PDF format
- viewing images of paid
cheques
- ordering cheque books
- download periodic
account statements
- Downloading
applications for M-banking, E-banking etc.
Bank customers can transact banking tasks through online
banking, including -
- Funds transfers
between the customer's linked accounts
Paying
third parties, including bill payments (see, e.g., BPAY) and telegraphic/wire
transfers
- Investment
purchase or sale
- Loan applications
and transactions, such as repayments of enrollments
- Register utility
billers and make bill payments
- Financial institution
administration
·
Management of multiple users having
varying levels of authority
- Transaction approval
process
- the process of banking
has become much faster
Some financial institutions offer unique Internet banking
services, for example
- Personal financial
management support, such as importing data into personal accounting software. Some online banking
platforms support account aggregation to allow the customers
to monitor all of their accounts in one place whether they are with their
main bank or with other institutions.