With 79% of Australian households now able to access the internet from home, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, chances are you probably do most of your banking online.
Internet banking has brought big changes for both customers and banks alike.
Convenience
No more standing in bank queues between the hours of 9:30am to 4pm, Monday to Friday.
Increasingly user friendly bank websites let you access and manage your finances instantly, and give you 24/7 access to new products, information, tools and calculators that enable you to make better informed choices about what bank products are right for you.
Smart phone technology now means you can download apps for your phone that let you check youve got enough cash in the bank to pay for your groceries while youre standing in the queue at Coles.
Changing relationships
The era of internet banking has also brought a change in relationship banking. Most of us have probably never sat down with our bank manager and rarely go into branches anymore.
At the same time there is now a wealth of information about all banks at our finger tips, so we are better educated consumers than we used to be.
Better educated consumers are good news for banks, it means they spend less time having to explain, and this saves them money, savings they can pass on to customers.
But it also means customer loyalty needs to be earned in different ways.
Banks have had to become more competitive, since we can all easily check what products other banks are offering and switch if we think its a better deal.
Offering better terms for packaged products, such as transaction accounts offset against home loans, is one way banks incentivise customers to do more of their banking with the same bank.
If your bank account, home loan, and credit card are all provided by the same bank theres a good chance youll be less likely to make the switch.
Changing responsibilities
When everything was done by a bank teller it was easy to identify who was responsible for any mistakes.
But if you mistype an account number or a BSB when you are paying a bill online, then its your mistake, not theirs.
These days you need to make sure you know where the responsibility for mistakes lies and whether youll get your money back if you are a victim of fraud of error.
You also need to be far more computer savvy. Online banking can be risky if you dont put in place a few good habits.
Dont use less secure publicly accessible Wi-Fi internet connections when you are making online transactions and change passwords regularly.
As technology and particularly mobile technology advances, internet banking will keep on changing the way we bank.