Investigating Online banking

The purpose of online banking is to offer customers of banks extra services e.g. Finding balances, making payments at anytime day or night, or even text message (SMS) banking. The use of IT in banking has opened up many new areas such as; offset mortgages, credit cards being linked to accounts so that payments can be made immediately, and account sweeping so that funds can be transferred automatically between accounts to ensure that the lowest possible fees are paid. As a result of the constant updates of new software and updates available to online stores or banks businesses are looking to become more reliant on there online pages. This is because they reduce overheads dramatically because fewer assistants are required and even further if retail premises or high street branches are not required there will be a big decrease in the companies outgoings, but before businesses can make there online services there main source of dealing with customers they need to be able to guarantee 100% safety of customers money/products etc...


Halifax and Nationwide are examples of businesses offering a Online banking service; they provide customers with good online bank accounts that can be used very easily, and for a regular user they can provide a very quick and easy form of banking. But they still can not guarantee 100% safety for your money, because there are so many fraudsters around using illegal set ups like phishing which can be very convincing and can be completely out of the banks and your control. Then as safety precautions the bank can offer a SMS service as some way of a constant feedback and sort of safety precaution. This is not very convincing and seems a bit dodgy to me because you could have your money stolen relatively easily and you are the one that provides all the details they need to log in to your account and start stealing your money, before you have even got the text and realised whats happening it would probably be to late.

How might online banking be improved in the future?

1. Safety - accounts need to be alot more reliable for users so they can trust that there money is safe and they are definitely not going to robbed in the future possible ways for online banks/stores to ensure safety could be;

- Making some sort of internet hologram that all the websites will have to have that can not be forged because they are so hard to make . So if users go on to a site with a funny looking hologram they can choose not to use it.

- More complex user id's which involve a hi-tech voice recognition password or something similar. So banks can start selling a online banking kit e.g. special software, headset, microphone, picture scanning etc...