Banking For All: September 2008

Reform and Renewal

Mother and daughter, China, 1993
Since then, the Bank Group has made much progress. All five institutions have been working - separately and in collaboration - to improve internal efficiency and external effectiveness. Clients report to be broadly pleased with the changes they see in Bank Group service levels, commitment, deliveries, and quality.

More than ever before, the Bank is playing an important role in the global policy arena. It has effectively engaged with partners and clients in complex emergencies from post-conflict work in Bosnia to post-crisis assistance in East Asia to post-hurricane clean-up in central America to post-earthquake support in Turkey and in Kosovo and East Timor.

Notwithstanding these considerable progress, the Bank Group's agenda is not yet complete, nor can it ever be, while the challenges of development continue to grow.

For a timeline of key events in Bank history, see the World Bank Group Historical Chronology.

Transition

US Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morganthau, Bretton Woods, July 1944

During the 1980s, the Bank was pushed in many directions: early in the decade, the Bank was brought face to face with macroeconomic and debt rescheduling issues; later in the decade, social and environmental issues assumed center stage, and an increasingly vocal civil society accused the Bank of not observing its own policies in some highprofile projects.

To address concerns about the quality of Bank operations, the Wapenhans Report was released and soon after, steps toward reform were taken, including the creation of an Inspection Panel to investigate claims against the Bank. However, criticism increased, reaching a peak in 1994 at the Annual Meetings in Madrid.

World Bank History

Norwegian Delegation,
Bretton Woods,
July 1944
Conceived during World War II at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the World Bank initially helped rebuild Europe after the war. Its first loan of $250 million was to France in 1947 for post-war reconstruction. Reconstruction has remained an important focus of the Bank's work, given the natural disasters, humanitarian emergencies, and postconflict rehabilitation needs that affect developing and transition economies.

Today's Bank, however, has sharpened its focus on poverty reduction as the overarching goal of all its work. It once had a homogeneous staff of engineers and financial analysts, based solely in Washington, D.C. Today, it has a multidisciplinary and diverse staff including economists, public policy experts, sectoral experts, and social scientists. 40 percent of staff are now based in country offices.

The Bank itself is bigger, broader, and far more complex. It has become a Group, encompassing five closely associated development institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Dispute

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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, wire transfer... and applications... apply for a loan, new account, etc.)
o Electronic bill presentment and payment - EBPP
o Funds transfer between a customer's own checking and savings accounts, or to another customer's account
o Investment purchase or sale
o Loan applications and transactions, such as repayments

* Non-transactional (e.g., online statements, check links, cobrowsing, chat)
o Bank statements
* Financial Institution Administration - features allowing the financial institution to manage the online experience of their end users
* ASP/Hosting Administration - features allowing the hosting company to administer the solution across financial institutions

Features commonly unique to business banking include

* Support of multiple users having varying levels of authority
* Transaction approval process
* Wire transfer

Features commonly unique to Internet banking include

* Personal financial management support, such as importing data into a personal finance program such as Quicken, Microsoft Money or TurboTax. Some online banking platforms support account aggregation to allow the customers to monitor all of their accounts in one place whether they are with their main bank or with other institutions...

[edit] History

The precursor for the modern home online banking services were the distance banking services over electronic media from the early '80s. The term online became popular in the late '80s and referred to the use of a terminal, keyboard and TV (or monitor) to access the banking system using a phone line. ‘Home banking’ can also refer to the use of a numeric keypad to send tones down a phone line with instructions to the bank. Online services started in New York in 1981 when four of the city’s major banks (Citibank, Chase Manhattan, Chemical and Manufacturers Hanover) offered home banking services[1] using the videotex system. Because of the commercial failure of videotex these banking services never became popular except in France where the use of videotex (Minitel) was subsidised by the telecom provider and the UK, where the Prestel system was used.

The UK’s first home online banking services[2] was set up by the Nottingham Building Society (NBS) in 1983 ("History of the Nottingham". Retrieved on 2007-12-14.). The system used was based on the UK's Prestel system and used a computer, such as the BBC Micro, or keyboard (Tandata Td1400) connected to the telephone system and television set. The system (known as 'Homelink') allowed on-line viewing of statements, bank transfers and bill payments. In order to make bank transfers and bill payments, a written instruction giving details of the intended recipient had to be sent to the NBS who set the details up on the Homelink system. Typical recipients were gas, electricity and telephone companies and accounts with other banks. Details of payments to be made were input into the NBS system by the account holder via Prestel. A cheque was then sent by NBS to the payee and an advice giving details of the payment was sent to the account holder. BACS was later used to transfer the payment directly.

Stanford Federal Credit Union was the first financial institution to offer online internet banking services to all of its members in Oct, 1994.[3]

[edit] Security
Security token devices
Security token devices

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 passwords to authenticate transactions. TANs can be distributed in different ways, the most popular one is to send a list of TANs to the online banking user by postal letter. The most secure way of using TANs is to generate them by need using a security token. These token generated TANs depend on the time and a unique secret, stored in the security token (this is called two-factor authentication or 2FA). 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 phishing and pharming. Cross-site scripting and keylogger/Trojan horses can also be used to steal login information.

A method to attack signature based online banking methods is to manipulate the used software in a way, that correct transactions are shown on the screen and faked transactions are signed in the background.

A recent FDIC Technology Incident Report, compiled from suspicious activity reports banks file quarterly, lists 536 cases of computer intrusion, with an average loss per incident of $30,000. That adds up to a nearly $16-million loss in the second quarter of 2007. Computer intrusions increased by 150 percent between the first quarter of 2007 and the second. In 80 percent of the cases, the source of the intrusion is unknown but it occurred during online banking, the report states.[4]

Countermeasures

There exist several countermeasures which try to avoid attacks. Digital certificates are used against phishing and pharming, the use of class-3 card readers is a measure to avoid manipulation of transactions by the software in signature based online banking variants. To protect their systems against Trojan horses, users should use virus scanners and be careful with downloaded software or e-mail attachments.

In 2001 the FFIEC issued guidance for multifactor authentication (MFA) and then required to be in place by the end of 2006. [5]

[edit] See also
Wikibooks
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of
E-Commerce and E-Business

* Current account
* Enhanced Telephone
* Guide to E-payments
* Mobile banking
* Online lenders
* On-line and off-line
* Smile Bank
* SMS Banking
* Telephone banking

[edit] References

1. ^ Cronin, Mary J. (1997). Banking and Finance on the Internet, John Wiley and Sons. ISBN:0471292192 page 41 from "Banking and Finance on the Internet". Retrieved on 2008-07-10.. See also "The Home Banking Dilemma". Retrieved on 2008-07-10. and "Computer Giants Giving a Major Boost to Increased Use of Corporate Videotex". Retrieved on 2008-07-10.
2. ^ A transaction document DL34/01/84 used by the Nottingham Building Society has a printed footnote: 'HOMELINK - The world's first electronic Building Society Service operated from the customer's home - is available through Nottingham Building Society in association with British Telecom and the Bank of Scotland. Homelink is a Trade Mark of Nottingham Building Society'
3. ^ "Stanford Federal Credit Union Pioneers Online Financial Services". Retrieved on 2007-12-14.
4. ^ Security Flaws in Online Banking Sites Found to be Widespread Newswise, Retrieved on July 23, 2008.
5. ^ OCC 2005-35

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_banking"
Categories: Web applications | Banking technology

Features

Online banking solutions have many features and capabilities in common, but traditionally also have some that are application specific.

Banking For All