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Online banking, also known as internet banking, virtual banking, web banking or home banking, is a system that enables customers of a bank or other financial institution to conduct a range of financial transactions through the financial institution's website or mobile app. Since the early 2010s, this has become the most common way that customers access their bank accounts. The online banking system will typically connect to or be part of the core banking system operated by a bank to provide customers access to banking services in addition to or in place of historic branch banking. Online banking significantly reduces the banks' operating cost by reducing reliance on a physical branch network and offers convenience to some customers by lessening the need to visit a bank branch as well as being able to perform banking transactions even when branches are closed, for example outside the conventional banking hours or at weekends and on holidays.
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.
Some banks operate as a "direct bank" or "neobank" that operate entirely via the internet or internet and telephone without having any physical branches relying completely on their online banking facilities.
Large banks, many working on parallel tracks to United American, followed in 1981 when four of New York's major banks (Citibank, Chase Manhattan, Chemical Bank, and Manufacturers Hanover) offered home banking services,Cronin, Mary J. (1997). Banking and Finance on the Internet, John Wiley and Sons. page 41 from using the videotex system. Because of the commercial failure of videotex, these banking services never became popular except in France (where millions of videotex terminals (Minitel) where given out by the telecom provider) and the UK, where the Prestel system was used.
The first videotext banking service in France was launched on December 20, 1983, by CCF Bank (now part of HSBC). Videotext online Banking services eventually reached 19% market share by 1991
The developers of United American Bank's first-to-market computer banking system aimed to license it nationally, but they were overtaken by competitors when United American failed in 1983 as a result of loan fraud on the part of bank owner Jake Butcher, the 1978 Tennessee Democratic nominee for governor and promoter of the 1982 Knoxville World's Fair. First Tennessee Bank, which purchased the failed bank, did not attempt to develop or commercialize the computer banking platform.
In 1995, Wells Fargo was the first U.S. bank to add account services to its website, with other banks quickly following suit. That same year, Presidential became the first U.S. bank to open bank accounts over the internet. According to research by Online Banking Report, at the end of 1999 less than 0.4% of households in the U.S. were using online banking. At the beginning of 2004, some 33 million U.S. households (31%) were using some form of online banking. Five years later, 47% of Americans used online banking, according to a survey by Gartner Group. Meanwhile, in the UK online banking grew from 63% to 70% of internet users between 2011 and 2012.Abdou, Hussein, English, John and Adewunmi, Paul An investigation of risk management practices in electronic banking: the case of the UK banks eprints.hud.ac.uk, University of Huddersfield, July 22, 2014 (PDF; 474 kB)
By 2018, the number of digital banking users in the U.S. reached approximately 61 percent. The penetration of online banking in Europe has been increased as well. In 2019, 93 percent of the Norwegian population access online banking sites, which is the highest in Europe, followed by Denmark and Netherlands. Across Asia, more than 700 million consumers are estimated to use digital banking regularly, according to a 2015 survey by McKinsey and Company.
By 2000, 80% of U.S. banks offered e-banking. Customer use grew slowly. At Bank of America, for example, it took 10 years to acquire 2 million e-banking customers. However, a significant cultural change took place after the Y2K scare ended.
In 2001, Bank of America became the first bank to top 3 million online banking customers, more than 20% of its customer base. In comparison, larger national institutions, such as Citigroup claimed 2.2 million online relationships globally, while J.P. Morgan Chase estimated it had more than 750,000 online banking customers. Wells Fargo had 2.5 million online banking customers, including small businesses. Online customers proved more loyal and profitable than regular customers. In October 2001, Bank of America customers executed a record 3.1 million electronic bill payments, totaling more than $1 billion. As of 2017, the bank has 34 million active digital accounts, both online and mobile. In 2009, a report by Gartner estimated that 47% of United States adults and 30% in the United Kingdom bank online.
The early 2000s saw the rise of the branch-less banks as internet only institutions. These internet-based banks incur lower overhead costs than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. In the United States, deposits at some direct banks are FDIC-insured and offer the same level of insurance protection as traditional banks. Neobanks are branch-less banks in the United States which are not FDIC-insured.
Since it first appeared in the United States, online banking has been federally governed by the Electronic Funds Transfer Act of 1978.
Online banking services later migrated to the Internet.
In 1997, the bank ING Direct Canada (now known as Tangerine Bank) was founded with almost entirely online banking using only small cafes for meetings and very few physical branches. This was completely different from how banks had operated in Canada previously. By the early 2000s, all of the major banks in Canada rolled out some form of online banking.
Since 2000, most financial institutions have been actively implementing online offices and web banking. 2007 - the number of Ukrainian banks that introduced Online Banking exceeded 20. 2018 - the ability to manage accounts and make transfers online is available in almost all financial institutions in Ukraine.
Nowadays, the list of Internet banking services, with rare exceptions, repeats the entire product line of banks. 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.
The rapid development of Internet banking in Ukraine is provoking the growth of Internet users. 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. There are 37 options in the Internet banking system of the First Ukrainian International Bank, 35 - in Alfa-Bank. One of the most popular services in which Internet banking users are interested in the ability to pay remotely for utilities.
Each financial institution can determine the types of financial transactions which a customer may transact through online banking, but usually includes obtaining account balances, a list of recent transactions, electronic bill payments, financing loans and funds transfers between a customer's or another's deposit account. Most banks set limits on the amounts that may be transacted, and other restrictions. Most banks also enable customers to download copies of bank statements, which can be printed at the customer's premises (some banks charge a fee for mailing hard copies of bank statements). Some banks also enable customers to download transactions directly into the customer's accounting software. The facility may also enable the customer to order a cheque book, statements, report loss of credit cards, stop payment on a cheque, advise change of address and other routine actions.
Some financial institutions offer special internet banking services, for example, Personal financial management support, such as importing data into personal accounting software. Some online banking platforms support account aggregation to allow the customers to monitor all of their accounts in one place whether they are with their main bank or with other institutions.
The use of a secure website has been almost universally embraced.
Though single password authentication is still in use, it by itself is not considered secure enough for online banking in some countries. There are essentially two different security methods in use for online banking:
A method to attack signature based online banking methods is to manipulate the used software in a way, that correct transactions are shown on the screen and faked transactions are signed in the background.
Another kind of attack is the so-called man-in-the-browser attack, a variation of the man-in-the-middle attack where a Trojan horse permits a remote attacker to secretly modify the destination account number and also the amount in the web browser.
A 2008 U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Technology Incident Report, compiled from suspicious activity reports banks file quarterly, lists 536 cases of computer intrusion, with an average loss per incident of $30,000. That adds up to a nearly $16-million loss in the second quarter of 2007. Computer intrusions increased by 150 percent between the first quarter of 2007 and the second. In 80 percent of the cases, the source of the intrusion is unknown but it occurred during online banking, the report states. Security Flaws in Online Banking Sites Found to be Widespread Newswise, Retrieved on July 23, 2008.
In 2014 in the UK, losses from online banking fraud rose by 48% compared with 2013. According to a study by a group of Cambridge University cybersecurity researchers in 2017, online banking fraud has doubled since 2011.
As of 2012 there were also combined attacks using malware and social engineering to persuade the user himself to transfer money to the fraudsters on the ground of false claims (like the claim the bank would require a "test transfer" or the claim a company had falsely transferred money to the user's account and he should "send it back"). Tatanga Attack Exposes chipTAN Weaknesses trusteer.com, September 4, 2012 Trojaner gaukelt Fehlüberweisung vor Heise Security, June 1, 2013
Whatever operating system is used, it is advised that the operating system is End-of-support, and properly patched.
Digital certificates are used against phishing and pharming, in signature based online banking variants (FinTS) the use of "Secoder" card readers is a measurement to uncover software side manipulations of the transaction data. Secoder 2.0-SStarMoney starmoney.de, Star Finanz-Software Entwicklung und Vertriebs GmbH, Retrieved on November 18, 2015.
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.
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) MTAN 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. “High Roller” online bank robberies reveal security gaps European Union Agency for Network and Information Security, July 5, 2012
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. In Spain, the number of bank branches had shrunk to about 20,000 in 19 years since the bailout of 2012 and with the Coronavirus pandemic another 3000 branches closed in 2 years. "They are excluding those of us who have trouble using the internet." 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".
With online banking, race discrimination is even less likely to be pinpointed, because of intransparent decision-making by algorithms.
Online banking requires access to broadband services. However not everyone has equal access to the internet, which has been called the digital divide. In March 2022, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission formed a task force to prevent digital discrimination.
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