e-banking in the old days...

I fully agree with you, online banking services should be interconnected to any other e-commerce facility. For example payment initiated in the webshop and executed in the online banking is a good alternative to the VPOS in several countries now.

On the other hand I think online banking should live up to the expectations set up by user interfaces of iPhone, Facebook, Youtube etc. Especially the younger generation will complain if they have to use an old text-and-tables style online banking app.

01/10/2009 08:20:42 József Nyíri, IND Group - Budapest added:

Thank you József,

Glad to read that you agree on using e-banking tools for "connecting-customers" in e-commerce. E-commerce-payments and e-id have been huge success stories in several countries.

I do agree that the ambition must be to adopt features from the social web as  much as possible - but as it is very difficult, if not impossible, to keep up speed with those who can start from a clean slate when banks are tied to decade old legacy systems. Thus a must to compensate by bringing in new dimensions of value from extended payments, trust services like e-id and order-in-chaos domains. Young customers will still complain - but the thing that can be done is to tell them what can be done and what cannot - at any sort of decent cost. Customers pay every cent of the costs anyway - and should be told that banks take responsibility for keeping them as low as possible in relation to the value delivered.

As Internet usage is already at 100% in sub 44 groups and the habit will stick when they get older - and the > 65 are moving in with gusto now it is logical that also e-banking is moving towards 100%. 

http://boharald.blogspot.com/2009/10/internet-users-by-age-group-in-finland.html

Bo,

Completely agree that all customers - retail, corporate and government - want to do everything through one channel. At the moment they're not quite agreed on which channel that is. I don't think that the channel is the same for all three and the problem for banks is the increased costs of maintaining multiple channels, particularly related to bank-specific software and security solutions.

I wrote a review of electronic banking last year (http://www.experianpayments.com/industry-hub/electronic_full-service_banking.html) which looks back at historical solutions. I think that new ways of communicating do provide an opportunity for banks' services to be more integrated into their customers (business) applications.

It would be good to realise the cost benefits you describe, it's just a question of how we get there.

Thank you Jonathan,

Impressive paper - I will read it as soon as I find the time. I do agree that there will be changes. Large enterprises have quite different needs from the SME-segment where basic banking is much like it is for the consumer - with the difference that they also need to send - not only receive e-invoices. Automated accounting and cash management services should also be offered.