Datapro Report

Banks Eye PC Banking and the Internet

Jannette Alston

Although automatic teller machines (ATMs) and telephone services are currently the most popular on-line banking services, the future of on-line banking growth lies in PC banking and the Internet. According to Datapro's 1996 international survey of banking-technology issues, 67 percent of banks offered ATMs in early 1996, and 52 percent provided telephone-banking services.

But based on survey results, only 2 percent of banks that don't already have ATMs plan to install them in 1997, compared to the 21 percent and 19 percent that will offer PC banking and Internet banking, respectively (see the table "New On-Line Banking-Service Plans" ).

Banks are moving toward on-line banking, which includes ATMs, phone and PC banking, the Internet, screen phones, and interactive TV, primarily due to customer requests (see the figure "Banks' Motivation for On-Line Banking" ). But reduced operations costs is another motivation for banks to adopt electronic banking services.

These results may demonstrate that banks are attempting once again to tap into the home-banking market. Perhaps now is the time that the retail-banking trend will begin to show more growth.

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New On-Line Banking-Service Plans

                    
Early
   
Late
   
1997
   
1998
    
No
     
No

                    
1996
    
1996
                
answer
  
plans


ATM                  67       4      2      1     13     14
Telephone            52      12      8      4     11     14
PC banking           19      19     21      8     17     18

Internet              7      17     19      6     21     31
Screen phone          3       3      5      2     31     56
Interactive TV        1       1      4      4     32     58

Source: Datapro's Banking Technology Issues: 
        1996 International Survey. 
(Questionnaires mailed in early 1996.) 
Contact Datapro for the full version of this report.

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Banks' Motivation for On-Line Banking

illustration_link (17 Kbytes)

Customer requests and reduced operations costs are the primary motivation ofr banks' move toward on-line banking.

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Jannette Alston is a senior analyst, financial services industry, at the Datapro Information Services Group (Delran, NJ). For more information, call (609) 764-0100 or contact http://www.datapro.com . The survey is a report from Datapro's Financial Industry Technologies & Trends: World View, Datapro's new information service.