Banking

Almost all banks and financial institutions offer access to some of their services via the Internet. Once you have a user name and PIN (personal identification number), you can do banking from anywhere, any time of the day or night. Internet banking is using the bank's Internet site to do your banking. Note: don't confuse Internet banking with e-commerce, which is about selling products and services via your own website or email.

The possible ways in which you might use the Internet for banking include:

• paying bills
• paying wages
• transferring money between your accounts
• obtaining account balances
• researching interest rates and special products available to you.

The possible benefits for businesses include:

• saving time physically going to a bank and standing in a queue
• doing banking out of hours, and from wherever is convenient to you - as long as you have a computer connected to the Internet you can do Internet banking
• obtaining information, such as account balances, instantly when you want it
• managing your various accounts more easily
• managing the payment of invoices more easily.

What to do

Contact your bank, or look on the Internet for their website, and find out:

• what Internet banking facilities they offer
• what their claims are about the benefits it will have for your business
• what you need to do to use them - eg what computer equipment and software are required
• what help is available in using the system
• if there are any charges and what they are
• what their security measures are.