To access a financial institution's online banking facility, a customer having personal Internet access must register with the institution for the service, and set up some password (under various names) for customer verification. The password for online banking is normally not the same as for [telephone banking]. Financial institutions now routinely allocate customers numbers (also under various names), whether or not customers intend to access their online banking facility. Customers numbers are normally not the same as account numbers, because number of accounts can be linked to the one customer number. The customer will link to the customer number any of those accounts which the customer controls, which may be cheque, savings, loan, credit card and other accounts. Customer numbers will also not be the same as any debit or credit card issued by the financial institution to the customer.
To access online banking, the customer would go to the financial institution's website, and enter the online banking facility using the customer number and password. Some financial institutions have set up additional security steps for access, but there is no consistency to the approach adopted.
History[edit]
The precursor for the modern home online banking services were the distance banking services over electronic media from the early 1980s. 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