PROF. ALLAH DITTA RAFIQ GCC BUREWALA
GOOD LUCK
spending more on PCs than TV sets. Modem penetration into house- holds is a key issue
for home banking, as online services require a modem. Clearly the technology exists to
make home banking a reality. "lether'it will happen via the Intemet, a proprietary service,
or both is yet to be deter- mined, but the home banking infrastructure is in place.
Home banking implementation approaches:
1. Proprietary bank dial up services.
2. Off the shelf home finance software.
3. Online services based banking
4. www based banking services.
Pushed by growing consumer demand and the fear of losing market share, banks are investing
heavily in. home banking technology. Collaborating with hardware, software,
telecommunications, and other companies, banks are introducing new ways for consumers to
access their account balances, transfer funds, pay bills, and buy goods and services without using
cash, mailing a cheek, or leaving home. The four major categories of home banking (ii-t
historical order) are:
Proprietary bank dial-up services. A home banking service, in cornbina on with a PC
and modem, lets the bank become an electronic gateway to customers' accounts, enabling
them to transfer funds or pay bills directly to creditors accounts.
Off-the-shelf home finance software. This category is a key player in cementing
relationships between current customers and helping banks gain new customers.
Examples include Intuit''s Quicken, Microsoft Money, and Bank of America's MECA
software. This software market is attracting interest from banks as it has steady revenue
streams by way of upgrades and the sale of related products and services.
Online services-based banking. This category allows banks to set up re- tail branches on
subscriber-based online services such as Prodigy, CompuServe, and America Online.
World Wide Web-based banking. This category of home banking allows Pt,Mbanks to
bypass subscriber-based online services and reach the customer's browser directly
through the World Wide Web. Ue advantages of this model are the flexibility at the back-
end to adapt to new online transaction processing models facilitated by electronic
commerce and the el~atiort of the constricting, intermediary (or ordine service).
In contrast to packaged software, which offers a limited. Set of services, the online and
WRWW approach offers further opportunities. As consumers buy more and more in
eyberspace using credit cards, debit cards, and newer financial instruments such as
electronic cash or electronic checks, they need software products to manage these
electronic transactions and reconcile them with other off-line transactions. In the future,
an increasing number of paper-based, manual financial tasks may be performed electroni-
cally on machines such as PCs, handheld digital computing devices, inter- active
televisions, and interactive telephones, and the banking software must have the
capabilities to facilitate these tasks.