Rowan posts over here about the differing ways banks react to third party providers utilising their account holder’s data. (Think Xero and it’s offerings). Rowan discusses the fact that there are varying degres of buy-in from our banks but all demand clunky registration forms and most want to clip the ticket on information transfers.

Seems to me (and I always manage to create some sort of 3rd generation opportunity out of enterprises that stick to a 1.0 methodology) that there is a real opportunity here for a progressive bank (or perhaps a non-bank wishing to punch above their weight) to really become an online banking institution.

The current offerings from most of the players are traditional channels merely ported to the web as another delivery offering. An example of backwards web-banking, my BNZ internet banking for business login requires me to remember a 9 digit number, a user code and a password. All of that only gets me to a point where I have to use a clunky piece of plastic electronic wizadry to come up with some highly random number string which I enter into the site to get access.

While all this hassle must guarantee a high degree of security (and it is my money we’re talking about here), it seems pretty old school – akin to showing the bank your passport when opening an account.

Surely in this day and age the banks coul poach some of TradeMe and Xero’s finest and develop a better UI offering?

Maybe?

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

4 Comments
  • Not maybe, willbe!

    Banking is going to change hugely in the coming years and it will be the web that drives the change (as with many businesses).

    We have already seen the rise of P2P lending and that offers a completely new platform for the processing of money exchange. I wrote here about real internet banking coming

    http://sustento.org.nz/internet-banking-coming-soon/

    but we may see a merging of P2P and traditional banking with community banks, LETS, time$ and barter based organisations.

    I imagine this will start in the youth sector just like MySpace, Facebook etc as they will be early adopters. The mobile sector will get involved more as a platform for P2P exchange. Need a tenner? just text it over!

    I’m very surprised TradeMe hasn’t leveraged into a finance platform because it seems to have the perfect market for it.

    Security aspects could change also..biometrics for example. I know what you mean abt the BNZ entry system. Just another card to lose!

  • raf – we think alike

    we should meet up sometime

  • I’d like to see Internet Banking develop into more of a personal money management tool. Do things like create virtual accounts so I can allocate money from a savings account to different savings goals and track those goals. Things like that would be cool.

  • Sure. Drop me a line and let’s “have coffee”.

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