The banking sector has entirely changed in the last ten years. Now, most of the banking services are available online, and you do not need to visit your bank. You can easily perform almost every banking transaction on either your laptop, or your mobile.
It’s you who is in Control
It is unbelievable to think that most of the functions that take not even a minute to do through online banking used to take almost half a day earlier. Recently, I was reading a post on the connected app where a senior citizen has shared his experience of online banking.
He wrote how just a few years ago, something as routine as withdrawing cash from his bank account took hours. Once you presented your cheque at the counter, they usually gave you a metal token and told you to wait. It took another hour to get your cheque cleared, and finally when you reached the cash counter, they asked for your ID, and took your signature before handing you cash.
And if you wanted a demand draft to be made, your entire day was spent there. Now, all these things and more hardly take a minute to do. This was made possible because of technology.
Now, online internet banking facilities are provided by financial institutions to all their customers. Online banking is done through the internet where bank account holders of private and PSU banks conduct various financial transactions such as transfer of payments, payment of utility bills, paying insurance premiums, getting bank statements, etc. This facility is provided by the official website of the retail bank, virtual bank, credit union or building society.
Process of Internet Banking
To use Internet Banking, a customer first needs to register for the online banking. Subsequently, he is given User ID, and Password which is used for the log in purpose. He has two kinds of passwords – login password, and transaction password the login password is used for checking balance and statement while transaction password is used for actual transactions.
Just before a transaction, the account holder receives an OTP (One time password). The transaction will take place only when the transaction password and OTP are filled. One Time Password is sent to the customer’s registered mobile number as an additional security measure to check the authenticity of the account holder.
To use Internet Banking, a customer needs to have access to the secure website of the financial institutions and will be required to provide all the necessary services and credentials. Usually, banks send SMS and email of the transactions carried out by the customers. It’s for the record purpose because people tend to forget things. But once you have proof of transaction in the form of a SMS on your mobile, and mail on your registered mail ID, you can always refer it back
Internet Banking is Very Convenient
Bank customers can perform the following activities on Internet Banking:
View account balance
Customers can visit their bank account through internet banking, and cheque their balance in savings as well as term deposit accounts. They can also download their monthly or quarterly statements in multiple formats like Excel, PDF etc. They can save these documents on their mobile or computers for future referrals.
Transfer Money to Family Members
For online transfer of money, you should have the account number, name of the account holder, and IFSC of the bank where you wish to transfer the money. First, you need to register the details of the account like the name of the account holder, their account number, name of bank, and the IFSC code.
Once you register the account number, you can transfer the money after half an hour. There are three different ways to transfer money from one account to another – IMPS, NEFT, and RTG. Through IMPS, you can immediately transfer the amount to the destination account while through NEFT; it takes two hours to complete the transfer. RTG is meant for transferring an amount of two lakhs or more.
There are two types of transfer – one time, and multiple times. For multiple transfers, you can schedule your transactions in advance. These types of transactions are basically used for paying bank EMIs against a loan. Once you schedule such transactions, every month on a certain date, the money is deducted from your bank account for the purpose of paying the EMI.
Services Like Issuing Cheque Books
Now, you don’t need to visit your bank for cheque books. You can instruct your banker through net banking to issue the cheque book. Once a request is made, it takes a week to receive cheque book at your mailing address.
Third Party Bill Payment
There are utility bills like electricity, water, internet charges, and society maintenance that one needs to pay every month. You can pay these charges by sending an instruction to your bank through internet banking. These bills will be automatically cleared every month.
