ARTICLE 6

Banking on the Internet Today
 by: Dakota Caudilla

Talking about conventional banking, you can already imagine the queue and long and tedious procedures. That was then. Now, most banks in developing and developed countries allow their customers to do their banking on the internet. Banking on the internet is extremely convenient and saves consumers a lot of time. One thing that we may have to concern ourselves with is the safety of banking on the internet. Internet banking replaces tedious tasks like writing and sending checks and personal banking-in of money through a teller or machine. Since we’re performing financial transactions on the internet, we have to make sure that the transactions are completely safe and secure. With the advancement of technology and internet banking infrastructure, most online banking websites are backed up with reliable and dependable systems that helps keep customers’ accounts and information away from prying eyes and malicious programs.

And of course, when you choose to do your banking on the internet, you’re looking at a bank that is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This means, you can literally perform transactions through the internet banking website anytime and anywhere you want without the hassle of driving to the bank, finding a parking space, queuing up, waiting for your turn. Internet banking effectively transforms a task that usually takes about 1 hour into a 2 minute task!

Electronic Fund Transfers (EFT) depend a lot of a form of internet banking technology that utilizes stuff like codes, PINs (Personal Identification Numbers). In order to access your internet banking account, you are issued codes and PINs to help the internet banking system recognize and verify the authentication of the login. This helps protect your account. Some inbound funds transfer done through an internet banking website requires scans of signatures for the officer to verify your identification. However, this is not the case with ALL internet banking websites. The requirements depend a lot on the country that the internet banking website is located.

Through internet banking, you can also authorize or cancel direct debits or even authorize a direct withdrawal from your account for bills like insurance premiums, mortgages, and utility bills. The amazing thing is that you can view and verify these transactions all completely online so that you are notified if there’s something amiss with your internet banking account.

Some financial institutions back their internet banking facilities with a phone-banking system. If the internet banking facility is not for you, you can always pay bills or perform transactions through the phone. Interestingly, if you wish to have a card that ties in with your bank account, the bank will issue you a debit card. The debit card works very much like a credit card; except that you will need to have enough funds in your bank account in order to use the debit card. By logging in to the internet banking account, you can transfer funds from your savings or checking account to your debit card and use the debit card at merchant counters for your purchases.

In this busy and stressful modern world, internet banking seems to be the answer to our banking nightmares.

 

About The Author Dakota Caudilla, journalist, and website builder Dakota Caudilla lives in Texas. He is the owner and co-editor of http://www.travel-and-play.com on which you will find a longer, more detailed version of this article.