E-banking

1. What is e-banking?
Online banking (or Internet banking) allows customers to conduct financial transactions on a secure website operated by their retail or virtual bank, credit union or building society.
2. E-banking in Spain
The e-banking begins to have importance in Spain as consequence of the measures to the information that was imposed in the European Union, though it has not managed to reach a high degree of importance.
However, with the arrival of the financial operators, at the end of 2005, there were approximately 4.000.000 of persons that were using this form of banking.

The business of the e-banking in Spain is joined to and e-business, for what acquires the same structure and this way we can classify it of the following ones:
a) Click  This model is completely virtual, without physical offices, for what the customers realize all the operations online. This one is the model that the companies most prefer. A clear example of this model would be the entity ING Direct what allows them an important saving in costs.
b) Brick&Mortar  This model represents the traditional structure of the company with a physical space. This model is the most used by the Spanish due to our cultural characteristics, there managing to be at the end of 2008 approximately 45.000 bank offices.
c) Click&Mortar  This model combines both previous models. In Spain, the most important is Citybank, due to the fact that two months after launching it to the market, it had spread to 36 countries.
The e-banking in Spain goes to three types of individuals: investments, retails and asset management. E-banking in Spain is reduced to offer services of information and maintenance, however, due to the change that is producing in the Spanish society with the arrival of a lot of immigrants, the entities are taking advantage of this opportunity to change this situation towards a development of the e-banking.
3. Advantages and disadvantages
- Advantages -
o Comfort and services of convenience, 24 hours to the day, 7 days a week.
o Operations from house.
o Global access.
o Save in time.
o Save in costs.
o Transparency in the information.
o Capacity of choice of the clients.
- Disadvantages -
o Worry for the safety and for the personal information.
o Physical Separation between the client and the bank.
o Little Internet use in rural zones
o Non existence of technological skills between the users.
4. Features
o The common features fall broadly into several categories

 Transactional (e.g., performing a financial transaction such as an account to account transfer, paying a bill…)
 Non-transactional
 Financial Institution Administration
 Support of multiple users having varying levels of authority
 Transaction approval process
 Wire transfer
o Security  Protection through single password authentication, as is the case in most secure Internet shopping sites, is not considered secure enough for personal online banking applications in some countries. Basically there exist two different security methods for online banking:
 The PIN/TAN system where the PIN represents a password, used for the login and TANs representing one-time password to authenticate transactions. TANs can be distributed in different ways. Usually online banking with PIN/TAN is done via a web browser using SSL secured connections, so that there is no additional encryption needed.
 Signature based online banking where all transactions are signed and encrypted digitally. The Keys for the signature generation and encryption can be stored on smartcards or any memory medium, depending on the concrete implementation.
Attacks  Most of the attacks on online banking used today are based on deceiving the user to steal login data and valid TANs. Two well known examples for those attacks are phising and pharming. Cross-site scripting and keylogger/Trojan horses can also be used to steal login information.
5. The most important e-banks in Spain.
o In Spain, the most important are the following ones:
 Caja Madrid.
 ING Direct in Spain.
 IWBank.
 Uno-e, e-banking belongs to BBVA.
 Caja Sur en línea.
 Banco Pastor.
 Openbank, e-banking belongs to Santander Group. About this one will be our example of e-banking in Spain.

6. OPENBANK.

This is the first Spanish online bank, belonging to “Grupo Santander” (a Spanish bank highly relevant) and covers 20% of online banking.
Still belongs to the Santander group, but, Openbank has its own management and independent administration of Santander. So we are talking about an online bank-type “click”.
- The operation base of this bank is OPERATIVE BANK ACCOUNT.

This account is like an account of a lifetime, without interest, no commission, is something like bumboat: it is the source of supply for services offered by Openbank.

But, how to open this account?
Only we must to do some steps.
In the web-page:
1. Fill in personal data, preferences correspondence…. (Little things).
2. Choose a password (4 digits).
3. Provide a current account from which to make a cash transfer. (Minimum quantity: 50 Euros).

Until this point, there is no need to do any transfer, only to do the previously said. Once this is done, you will receive the first documentation by certified mail in a few days.
What do you receive by certified mail?

1. Operational key: the key element of the operation in Openbank.
It is an 8-digit alphanumeric code, which you will need to do any operation.
2. Also receive a PIN for your debit card 4B Mastercard.
3. The cash transfer order: The order that you give your bank for the amount transferred to Openbank that you introduced in the first contact.
4. The bank code of your new account (the twenty digits).
5. The document to signing contracts.
6. Instructions on how to operate them.
7. An envelope for re-send, the document signed subscription contracts, and the cash transfer order.

Once everything has been sent, and they verify that everything is correct, and you get everything you need to operate: you can use your Mastercard Card and access to your “client area” in www.openbank.es.
Once fully operational, simply transfer money from your regular account to operational account and get moving.
To connect to our client account, we fill the boxes with our data, identity card and four-digit password

AVAILABLE OPERATIONS.

It offers its customers the full range of traditional bank services and no commission: accounts, deposits, cards (VISA and 4B for the first owner free), loans, mortgages, Mutual Funds, Pension Plans and a wide operational Brokerage (Securities, futures, warranst, ETFs …).

You can see your movements on our cards, or our account
- Date from, to date.
- Date of operation, concept, amount, balance…

See your deposits:
- Number, opening date, closing date, T.A.E., renewal, capitalization of interest,

Transfer…

All of this quickly, you can do it in your home, no commissions, and probably with greater interest.

What problems we find in these pages?

Of course these types of banks want to attract online customers, but also traditional banks are aware that if their customers use this method to do their operations, it is a source of cheaper costs.
But why is there reluctance to use them, and why we continue going to our branch to perform our operations?

One major concern you have is the fear of Internet spies that can track our movements, or stolen your money. Like phishing, fraud based on obtaining passwords or confidential information of customers to use their accounts, make transfers…
This like any other misfortune can happen, but it is very difficult, almost impossible to happen. Online banking services have a very high security measures with encryption and decryption code, which customers don´t know of its existence.

if banks want to attract more customers, more publicity should be given to security measures.

Continuing with our example, Openbank, is using a method of sending sms to confirm transactions with a code that must involve acceptance of the transaction on the website.
For example, if we want to make a transfer, first, we connect to our client account. Let the operational area and choose the type of transfer that we wish to perform and the source account from which we will send the money. After completing the data fields of the recipient, we asked several key alphanumeric characters.

After completing the data we received an additional request, the code must reach us via sms to mobile number we have provided and it is necessary to perform wire transfers.

And if you have a error in the code you received, you will receive the following notification.
In the event that everything is correct, the transfer will be successful.

More problems and drawbacks ?

In recent years, Spain is experiencing significant growth in immigration, (South America, Romania, Morocco …) and this is a great potential in business, and of course, e-banking.
As can you observe, the web space, is exclusively in Spanish, you can´t choose the language.
Most banks are solving this problem because its cost is reduced and may increase its customers considerably.

Finally, mention that there are many customer complaints about facilitites served by the customer sevice. In many times do not solve the problems.
So, banks should pay attention to this problem.