Online
banking services
Online banks offer a varied selection of services
and facilities. The kind of access you have to your accounts
also depends on the bank, with some banks offering more control
and options than others.
This is a general list of the kind
of services that online banks often offer to their customers.
The actual selection
of services that are offered will depend on which particular
online bank you are doing business with.
• Bill Payments
This lets you directly
authorise payments from your bank account to a third-party
account. This makes it possible
for you to
pay for a store card directly, for example, instead of
having to write and send a cheque or arrange for
a money order.
• Money
Transfers
Money transfers usually involves the direct
transfer of funds between accounts in the same bank. This
makes
it
convenient
to transfer money from your current account to savings
account, for instance.
• Standing Orders
Many banks offer facilities
for managing standing orders. By going online you can check
the status
of your existing
standing
orders and make new orders if you need to.
• Direct
Debits
Through direct debits, you can automate
the payment for regular services at specified interval
(every
end of
the month, for
example). This allows you to set up your
account so that your bills are taken care of regularly
without requiring
you to
manually initiate each transaction every
time. Your bank will provide you with a report so
you can keep
track
of your payments.
• Transaction
list
One very common online banking service
accessed by customers is a list of all
transactions
on their accounts. This
provides essentially the same information
contained in a monthly
statement, except that this is updated
throughout the day to allow you
to view all recent transactions.
Keep
in mind that there is typically a delay before a transaction
list will
update
to
reflect any changes,
usually one or
two hours after the transaction takes
place. This depends on
the bank and some actually take longer. |
