Online Banking – How Useful Is It?

Data published by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas shows that as on June 2016 there were a total of 121 banks (including 35 universal / commercial banks, 34 thrift banks and 52 rural and cooperative banks) that offered electronic banking facilities like Internet and mobile banking.

What is online banking?

To put it simply, online banking refers to the conduct of banking through electronic banking channels – this is an umbrella term for Internet banking, mobile banking, phone banking, banking through mobile apps etc.

How useful is online banking?

Let us look at what is possible through online or electronic banking through a couple of real-life examples:

 ▪ The Philippine National Bank offers a bouquet of eBanking Services including Internet banking, phone banking, SMS banking and ATM banking.  

PNB's Internet Banking allows you to:

▫ Monitor your account balances and transactions 

▫ Transfer funds 

▫ Pay bills 

▫ Open accounts 

▫ Schedule payments and fund transfers and program recurring transactions 

▫ Order checkbooks 

▫ View, download and print transaction history online 

▫ Get notifications via emails or text messages regarding your transactions. 

▪ Citibank offers a plethora of online banking services including Internet banking, banking via mobile app and banking via mobile browser. Highlights include: 

▫ Tracking and managing your accounts 

▫ Making bill payments online – either by having bills charged to your credit card or debited against your bank account. 

▫ Transferring funds – either locally between your Citibank accounts or to other bank accounts or globally to your Citibank accounts across the world or to another bank. 

▫ Requesting call backs from the bank through the Call Me Back Service. 

▫ Managing all your Citibank accounts worldwide through a single platform when you log on to your Citibank Philippines account. 

▫ Ordering Peso / Dollar checkbooks. 

▫ Viewing interest rates and foreign exchange rates. 

▫ Changing ATM Pins. 

▫ Open Time Deposits. 

▫ Opening a Checking or a Savings Account. 

▫ Nicknaming your accounts for easier identification while operating. 

▫ Converting single-receipt credit card purchases of Php 5,000 or more into installment payments via Citi Paylite. 

▫ Redeeming Citibank Rewards points for gifts or mileage. 

▫ Monitoring credit card usage through category-wise graphs. 

▫ Applying for a credit card or for supplementary credit cards. 

▫ Changing credit card cash advance PIN. 

The above will give you a fair idea of what you can expect to do through online banking. But, keep in mind the specific array of services that are available through online banking will differ from bank to bank.

 

Interesting Facts About Mobile Banking

Mobile banking is the provision of banking services through mobile technology and mobile devices including smartphones. Let us look at a few facts and developments with relation to mobile banking and mobile money in the Philippines:

▪ As of end-June 2015, there were 638 operating banks with 9,890 branches and 268 of these banks were offering various e-banking services such as electronic wallet, cash/remittance products, Online banking, phone banking, mobile banking and hybrid mobile/Internet via BancNet-MegaLink switch banking service in the Philippines.

▪ It has been estimated that more than a third of Philippines' 1,600 cities and municipalities do not have banks. However, the ratio of mobile SIM cards to the Philippine population was at about 114 percent.

▪ According to the World Bank, about 50 million Filipinos do not have a bank account. This has led the Bangko Sentral Ng Pilipinas (BSP) to allow banks and mobile services companies to offer mobile-banking accounts in 2009 through its “Guidelines on Use of Electronic Money”.

▪ By 2014, there were 27 million mobile money accounts, more than half the 45 million traditional bank accounts in the country. The value of transactions conducted through these accounts rose to just under US$700 million a month.

▪ According to a study done by the Better Than Cash Alliance, it is estimated that 99% of payment transactions per month are done in cash, with businesses and individuals making only 1% and 0.3% electronic payments respectively in 2013. E-commerce also makes up less than 1% of total commerce.

▪ As a key part of its commitment to the National Strategy for Financial Inclusion, the BSP  together with industry stakeholders, launched the National Retail Payment System (NRPS) Framework on the 09^th of December 2015 at the BSP Executive Business Center.

The vision of the NRPS is to create a safe, efficient and reliable electronic retail payment system that is interconnected and interoperable. With the NRPS, the BSP hopes to increase the 1% share of electronic retail payments to at least 20% by 2020. The full NRPS could be up and running by mid-2017.

Mobile banking in the Philippines is offered through the following forms:

▪ Through SMS – Here, you use SMSes to conduct transactions, both financial and non-financial. Take the PNB Mobile Banking service, for instance. Through this service you can enquire about your account balances and last transactions / remittances, transfer funds immediately to family and friends and pay bills from wherever you are.

Another variant of this service is the SIM Banking service offered by BPI. If you are a subscriber of Globe / TM or SMART you can access a range of banking services through your phone's SIM menu. If, for instance, you are a SMART subscriber, you can make balance enquiries, transfer funds, make bill payments, reload prepaid phone / SMART Bro and reload SMART Money.

▪ Through your phone's browsers – Citibank offers a Banking via Mobile Browser service (in addition to its apps). Through this Mobile Banking service you can pay bills, transfer funds, view account details/summary and some more transactions.

▪ Through Apps – Many banks offer mobile apps which you need to download and use. BPI, in addition to its SIM Banking service, offers mobile banking apps for Android, iOS, Windows and BB10 OS phones. HSBC offers its Mobile Banking app, for iOS and Android phones, through which you can access all your HSBC bank and credit card accounts.