Text IV. RETAIL BANKING ON THE INTERNET

Internet banking is still in its infancy. Although most of the top 100 banks in the U.S. have a Web site, the Online Banking Report classifies 24 of them as “true Internet Banks” – banks that let their customers review balances, transfer funds and pay bills on their Web sites. Smaller banks also have Web presences. In Online Banking’s list of 133 “True Internet Banks,” 109 do not make the list of the top 100 U.S. banks ranked by assets.

Before the decade is out, customers are likely to be able to do most of their banking transactions on the Web. According to a 1996 Booz-Allen & Hamilton survey of North American Financial institutions with Web sites, 80 percent of respondents planned to allow their customers to conduct most traditional banking transactions over the Internet within three years.

On-line retail banking is being driven by lower operating costs, the ability to offer new services, and the ability to do one-to-one marketing

Lower Operating Costs. On-line banking services are less expensive to offer to customers than other forms of banking. Checking an account balance or transferring funds form a checking account to a savings account can be done in person at a branch bank, over the telephone, with an Automatic Teller Machine (ATM), at home using a PC, or, in some cases, on a bank’s Web site.

A branch bank can serve as many customers as it has staff to handle. Once the investment is made to create a fully functioning Internet site (for a large bank, the initial investment could be millions of thousands of dollars), the bank’s Web site can handle one customer inquiry or tens of thousands a day.

Booz-Allen & Hamilton estimates that it costs about a penny to conduct a banking transaction using the Internet and more than one dollar if handle by a teller at a branch bank.

New Services. Today’s on-line banking allows customers to check account balances, transfer funds, and update customer information – transactions that can already be performed through traditional banking channels. For some banking from home or the office is preferable to calling the bank’s automated phone service or going to a branch bank. Others do not find the services offered on-line today reason enough to change their banking habits.

In the future, analysts expect that Internet banking will be enhanced with new services that make on-line banking easier and more convenient that banking by ATM, by phone, or visiting the branch bank. Paying bills electronically is one such example.

Checks are the preferred method of bill payment in United States. For a business, preparing and sending paper bills can be costly. For a consumer, paying bills by check can take a great deal of time. Billers print out and mail the bills to a consumer’s home. The consumer writes a check, records the check number and amount paid, balances the checkbook, finds a stamp, and mails the check back to the biller. The biller receives the check, updates his accounts, and sends the check to the bank to credit to his account. Handling paper bills and checks can cost a biller between $1,65 and $2,70 each time he sends out a bill. It costs the customer time and the price of a stamp to pay each bill.

Today’s Internet-based bill payment services take some of the paperwork out of the process. Rather than writing a paper check and mailing it to the vendor, a customer authorizes his bank to pay bills on his behalf. This saves the customer some time, and may save the vendor some money, if all steps are completed electronically. However, vendors still incur the costs of mailing the bill to the customer. And, smaller vendors without an electronic connection still have a series of manual and paper-based steps to complete.

Some banks believe that future Web-based bill payment services can make the entire process paperless. The vendor will send an electronic image of the bill to the customer’s bank. The customer will electronically authorize the bank to pay the bill, the bank will debit the customer’s account, and the vendor will receive payment electronically. The vendor’s printing and mailing costs are eliminated, and processing costs are greatly reduced. The customer enjoys the convenience of paying bills without having to keep stamps and envelopes on hand. With services that automatically update account balances, the customer also saves time he formerly spent balancing his checkbook.

 

Vocabulary notes

retail banking – розничные услуги банка

infancy – младенчество, начало пути

true bank – настоящий, надёжный банк

to review – обозревать, знакомится

to rank – занимать место, котироваться

to survey – обследовать

a teller – счётчик

expensive – дорогой

savings – сбережения

preferable – предпочтительный

to transfer funds – переводить фонды

to enhance – увеличивать

to update – обновить в соответствии с требованиями

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