Online banking

Internet banking provides personal and corporate banking services offering features such as making electronic payments, viewing account balances, obtaining statements, checking recent transactions and transferring money between accounts.

The term 'online' became popular in the late 1980s and referred to the use of a terminal, keyboard, and TV or monitor to access the banking system using a phone line.

Services available in its first years included bill pay, account balance checks, and loan applications, as well as game access, budget and tax calculators and daily newspapers.

[6] The attraction of online banking is fairly obvious: diminished transaction costs, easier integration of services, interactive marketing capabilities, and other benefits that boost customer lists and profit margins.

In 2019, 93 percent of the Norwegian population access online banking sites, which is the highest in Europe, followed by Denmark and Netherlands.

[9] Across Asia, more than 700 million consumers are estimated to use digital banking regularly, according to a 2015 survey by McKinsey and Company.

Wells Fargo had 2.5 million online banking customers, including small businesses.

In October 2001, Bank of America customers executed a record 3.1 million electronic bill payments, totaling more than $1 billion.

Online banking started in the United Kingdom with the launch of Nottingham Building Society (NBS)'s Homelink service in September 1982, initially on a restricted basis, before it was expanded nationally in 1983.

The system allowed users to "transfer money between accounts, pay bills and arrange loans... compare prices and order goods from a few major retailers, check local restaurant menus or real estate listings, arrange vacations... enter bids in Homelink's regular auctions and send electronic mail to other Homelink users.

[14] At the time Chemical Bank in New York was "still working out the bugs from its service, which offers somewhat limited features".

Since it first appeared in the United States, online banking has been federally governed by the Electronic Funds Transfer Act of 1978.

After a test period with 2,500 users starting in 1984, online banking services were launched in 1988, using Minitel terminals that were distributed freely to the population by the government.

[15] According to a poll conducted by Japanese Bankers Association (JBA) in 2012, 65.2% were the users of personal internet banking.

By 2024, there are 8 virtual banks in the city (including ZA, Mox, Livi, PAO, Airstar, WeLab, Fusion, Ant), [18] most of which are financially backed by larger corporations.

Data from the Slovenian Central bank also show that the total value of payments in 2017 reached more than €240 million.

2018 - the ability to manage accounts and make transfers online is available in almost all financial institutions in Ukraine.

With the help of Internet banking (IB), you can not only control the movement of funds in their accounts, but also perform more complex operations: for example, order a payment card or open a deposit account, repay the loan, and recently it became possible to buy and sell currency.

It is important to mention that the largest functionality, more than 40 options - from transfers and opening deposits to home accounting and purchasing tickets are available in PrivatBank.

One of the most popular services in which Internet banking users are interested in the ability to pay remotely for utilities.

[30] Compared to several years ago, when the people living in Macedonia had to go directly to the banks to perform financial transactions, today there is a widely functional e-banking system.

[7] Financial institutions have set up various security processes to reduce the risk of unauthorized online access to a customer's records, but there is no consistency to the various approaches adopted.

In 80 percent of the cases, the source of the intrusion is unknown but it occurred during online banking, the report states.

[41] According to a study by a group of Cambridge University cybersecurity researchers in 2017, online banking fraud has doubled since 2011.

[46] Digital certificates are used against phishing and pharming, in signature based online banking variants (HBCI/FinTS) the use of "Secoder" card readers is a measurement to uncover software side manipulations of the transaction data.

[47] In 2001, the U.S. Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council issued guidance for multifactor authentication (MFA) and then required to be in place by the end of 2006.

[48] In 2012, the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security advised all banks to consider the PC systems of their users being infected by malware by default and therefore use security processes where the user can cross-check the transaction data against manipulations like for example (provided the security of the mobile phone holds up) SMS TAN where the transaction data is sent along with the TAN number or standalone smartcard readers with an own screen including the transaction data into the TAN generation process while displaying it beforehand to the user (see chipTAN) to counter man-in-the-middle attacks.

In 2022, a retired Spanish urologist with Parkinson's disease gathered more than 600,000 signatures in an online petition asking banks and other institutions to serve all citizens, and not discriminate against the oldest and most vulnerable members.

"[51] In February 2022, Spanish banks signed a protocol at the Ministry of Economy (Spain) pledging to offer better customer services to senior citizens, for example by "extending again their branch opening hours, giving priority to older people to access counters and simplifying the interface of their apps and web pages".

In March 2022, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission formed a task force to prevent digital discrimination.

A screenshot of Frankfurter Volksbank Showing E-banking transactions
A 1985 AT&T Home Banking console.
UML class diagram depicting a bank account
Five security token devices for online banking