Online Banking

Today i looked at online banking to see how it works, and if it is faster and easier than going into an actual bank.

I have looked at 2 websites for banks,

The Abbey National - http://www.abbey.com/csgs/Satellite?pagename=Abbey/GSDistribuidora/GS_Home

NatWest - http://www.natwest.com/personal.ashx

The purpose of Online banking is to save the customers time, if they need to pay bills etc they can log onto their computer and pay then quickly rather than talking to someone on a phone for 20 minutes or going into the actual bank and quueing up for ages.

There are security risks involved with online banking, a keylogger could pick up your card details, card holder name etc. Also the website could be a fake, made to look the same as your banks website but when you enter your details the fraudulant webites owner will recive your details.

The target audiences of Online banking, i believe, are students and young adults, people who have beenn brought up using the internet. Also Businessmen who do not have the time to spare going into banks all the time can quickly and effeciantly do their banking in their office, without moving from their chair.

NatWest fufills its purpose of their target audiences because as seen on their home page, they offer free rail cards for students wgo apply for a student account. This will draw more students to the bank as they will be able to travel cheaply on trains back to their family / university when they please.

NatWest also have a page specificly for Businesses: http://www.natwest.com/business.ashx

This shows that NatWest also cater for their second target market by offering a service dedicated to Businesses and their finances.

Abbey on the other hand doesnt seem to offer much, just the standard banking. This shows that Abbey targets civilians and the general population rather than certain minorities. But still this attracts a lot of people who just want simple banking without all the extra accounts etc.

Benefits of online banking are that it is easily accessable to anyone with interenet acesss, and people who dont have interent at home can go to the local library and use their computers, most of the time for free. It is quick and easy and means that less people are travelling to their local bank, thus saving fuel and helping the ecomonmy.

Disadvantages are, as stated before, that not everyone has internet acess and may have to travel to use the internet, which means why may as well just travel to their local bank. There is also a lot of information to remember, i.e logins / passwords / secret questions and answers. If the user writes this infomation down and then it gets lost / stolen they cannot acess their online account and someone may use it to acess their bank online.

Online banking could improve in the future by being more secure, the major issue is identity fraud. Most people are worried that their information can be tracked on the internet and someone will gain use of their personal account and this money. Going into a real bank with ID and credit cards is a more sure way of identifying somone than having to trust that the person hasn't just found out someone elses's details to log into the online account.

APart from security issues and lack of internet to some people, Online banking is a useful and acessable tool avalible to anyone who has a bank account and the interent.