Electronic Banking Essay, Research Paper

The Electronic Banking Association (EBA) is a non-profit organization

established to do one simple thing-help more people get started with electronic

banking. Here’s why. Who taught you how to write paper checks? Probably your

parent’s right? Well, who’s going to teach you how to write electronic checks?

Probably NOT your parents. That’s where they come in. E-banking is so much more

convenient and so much quicker that everyone should know about it. The EBA was

established as an independent source of helpful information about electronic

banking for consumers and businesses. Financial institutions, merchants, and

other financial service firms actually provide financial e-commerce services,

but the Electronic Banking Association (EBA) monitors progress in the financial

e-commerce industry and provides information that will enable users of those

services to become better informed and to locate providers of the services they

seek. Everyone hates paying bills. It’s time-consuming, frustrating, and you

have to lick that awful envelope glue. But not with e-banking. You’ll spend less

time paying bills, and more time doing fun stuff. Here are some advantages to

e-banking: – No more paper checks. Your computer remembers who you write checks

to. You simply enter an amount then point-and-click. You’ll never run out of

checks again. – No more hassles. You can schedule your payments in advance, so

they’ll get paid while you’re on vacation or away on business. Electronic

payments are processed quickly, in as little as 24 hours to 5 days (unlike a

paper check sent in the mail, which takes an average of 10 days to post). – No

more envelopes to lick. No envelope glue. No paper cuts on your tongue. And you

can stop writing your return address again, and again, and again. – No more

writer’s cramp. It takes forever to write checks and addresses every month.

E-banking cuts that time to practically nothing. – No more stamps. With

e-banking, there’s no postage and your bills are processed quickly – whenever

you want them paid. You can pay your bills online, so it only makes sense to

receive them that way, too. This is called "Electronic Bill

Presentment," and more and more businesses are going to offer it. – No more

lost bills. Your dog can’t eat electronic bills. Your kids can’t misplace them.

And you can’t lose them under a stack of catalogs. – Pay bills when you want to.

Not when the post office decides to deliver them. Click to see it. Click to pay

it. Your bills appear right on your computer screen and look much like the

printed bills you are used to getting. But the difference is you can pay them

with just the click of a mouse. – Better record keeping. All your billing and

payment information is kept in one convenient location, not in messy cardboard

boxes or goodness only knows where else. You can pay your bills online, so it

only makes sense to receive them that way, too. This is called "Electronic

Bill Presentment," and more and more businesses are going to offer it. In

addition to paying bills online, you can get current information any time you

want it. So you can get up-to-date account balances, transfer funds, obtain

information about check clearing; all sorts of things. You can import this

information directly into today’s popular financial management programs such as

Quicken? without having to re-enter it. You buy things all the time with credit

cards, right? Well then, those are electronic transactions just like these.

Today’s latest Web browsers have sophisticated encryption that’s very secure.

What’s more, electronic checks are safer than having paper checks lying around

where anyone can obtain and misuse your account information. Experts predict it

would take a hacker over 2,000 years to crack 56-bit encryption. Yet many

financial institutions today require a browser that supports 128-bit encryption,

which would take about 12,710,204,652,610,000,000,000,000 years to crack. Now

that’s secure. (Source: Byte Magazine) When you’re ready to open an e-banking

account, you can receive more information on security, as well as a recent

browser that supports 128-bit encryption, through your financial institution or

at the Netscape and Microsoft Web sites. In the time it takes you to pay your

bills the old-fashioned way, you can be up and running with e-banking. Best of

all, once you enter who you pay bills to, you’ll never have to re-enter that

information. Your financial institution may offer e-banking via the Web or a

personal financial manager or both. Web-based e-banking is generally easier and

quicker to set up. All you’ll need is a recent browser that supports U.S.

encryption. To use your financial institution’s personal finance manager, you’ll

need the software from that institution. How to set up an online account (You’ll

need a checking account established with the financial institution first.): 1.

Have important information handy (account numbers, driver’s license, social

security number, credit card numbers, employer contact info, previous address).

2. Go to your financial institution’s web site. 3. Click to the e-banking page

of the site. 4. Fill out and submit the online e-banking enrollment form. 5.

Within a few days your financial institution will send you a e-banking start-up

package that will contain a user ID, password and web site address with

instructions on how to begin e-banking. That’s all there is to it! You’ll be

amazed how convenient e-banking is. Try it once, and you’ll never go back.