People who have bank accounts frequently need to do things with them, such as pay bills. It is often easier for them to do these transactions themselves, rather than go through a bank employee to get them done. Having customers perform their own transactions also reduces the bank’s cost of providing service. By supporting self service banking, Internet banking benefits both the bank and its customers.

Banks have been working towards self service facilities for their customers for quite a while. Telephone based systems were first implemented almost 40 years ago, and are still used successfully today. Unfortunately, the voice interface is difficult to use for complex situations, or when large amounts of information are requested.

There were many attempts to build online banking systems with keyboards and visual output, going back as far as the early 1980s. Some of these had limited success, but never on a large scale. The growth of the Internet to a nearly universal network, coupled with the wide adoption of ever cheaper personal computers and the world wide web, created a platform for mass market access to online banking.

Today there are few banks that don’t have an Internet banking system based on the world wide web. In fact for some banks, commonly called Internet banks, this may be their only interface for customers who wish to process routine transactions. The minimum set of functionality tends to be transfers of funds between accounts, payment of bills, and responding to customer inquiries.

The most basic customer inquiry is to get current account balances. Recent account activity, and recent account statements, may also be available to this function. One of the more recent developments is the ability to view facsimiles of recently paid checks.

Bill payment systems may be limited to payments to payments to accounts located at the bank providing the service. These days it is more common to be able to pay to accounts at most businesses, even other banks. It might also be possible to pay individuals. Sometimes a repetitive payment can be set up to automatically pay the same amount to the same payee on the same day of every month. Most systems mandate that a link to the party being paid be established before payments are generated.

Moving money from one account to another is done via the transfer between accounts transaction. This may or may not be limited to accounts at the same bank. Another variable is whether the accounts must have common owners or not.

Internet banking is not limited to the above transactions. Some systems allow payment of a check to be stopped. Reordering checks for a checking account may also be possible. The general rule is that transactions that are frequently executed and which are not too complex can be done more cost effectively with Internet banking than with other means that require a bank employee to be involved.

Since Internet banking systems have access to customer funds, security is very important. The system should be careful to authenticate that the person logging in is the customer they claim to be, generally be requiring the use of a login userid and password. There should be a complete audit trail of system actions, so that investigation of problems can be thorough.

Internet banking is good for the bank and the customer. It provides better service at a lower cost. It is just one of many services that are facilitated by the universality of the Internet.