The Benefits of Online Bank Accounts
Online banking has its origins in electronic funds transfer systems from the 1980s. These systems were designed to allow for quick and easy electronic banking. Originally, customers were reluctant to bank online, if for no other reason than that it required them to have a certain specific piece of technology which they would otherwise have not purchased. Originally, these were often videotex systems, which in general did not catch on with the public.
It was only when it became possible for customers to bank online using machines which they already had that online bank accounts became more and more popular. In this way, online banking simply became a convenient way to conduct banking practices, instead of something that a customer would have to go out of his or her way to do.
Since then, with the pervasiveness of Internet connections and devices that can log into it, customers have come to bank online more and more often. Online bank accounts are often the same as real world bank accounts, but there may be no fundamental difference when these online bank accounts are now used to pay utility bills and the like in an entirely online fashion without ever needing to resort to paper or physical documentation. Users can now bank online by transferring funds between checking and savings accounts purely through the computer.
To bank online has become significantly more easy and more convenient for customers, so that now customers don't have to go to their physical banks except for certain functions, such as making deposits and withdrawing money. Even these are not necessarily going to be detached from online bank accounts for long, however, as new technologies are explored which might allow customers to perform withdrawals from their computers into computerized cards they would carry on their persons. Deposits, similarly, can now be made directly into online bank accounts without ever needing to be put into a physical form. It is possible that if the aforementioned technology does become viable, then deposits could be made just as easily as withdrawals, purely with a computer system.
Because it is easier than ever before to bank online, some banks are actually entirely online, offering only online bank accounts with no physical presence whatsoever. These banks, which would likely have seemed to be nothing short of scams only a few decades ago, are now a genuinely viable alternative thanks to the ease and speed of online banking. Indeed, many of these banks only exist because it costs less to bank online than it does to bank in a physical way, thus allowing an online bank to function with less money.
The ability to bank online with ease and to use online bank accounts for purchases has led to e-payments and other such transactions similarly becoming more viable. As mentioned earlier, many banks offer services wherein they consolidate bills, such that all those bills can be easily paid at once through online bank accounts. To bank online would also give customers easy access to a list of their transactions to ensure that the information is up to date and accurate without any problems of waiting for a statement to arrive.
In general, customers are more willing to bank online and this trend will only continue into the future, as the process becomes increasingly more convenient and more secure.
