In its very basic form, e-banking can mean the provision of information about a bank and its services via a home page on the World Wide Web (WWW). More sophisticated e-banking services provide customer access to accounts, the ability to move their money between different accounts, and making payments or applying for loans via e-Channels. The term e-banking will be used in this book to describe the latter type of provision of services by an organization to its customers. Such customers may be either an individual or another business. To understand the electronic distribution of goods and services, the work of Rayport and Sviokla (1994; 1995) is a good starting point. They highlight the differences between the physical market place and the virtual market place, which they describe as an information-defined arena. In the context of e-banking, electronic delivery of services means a customer conducting transactions using online electronic channels such as the Internet.
Many banks and other organizations are eager to use this channel to deliver their services because of its relatively lower delivery cost, higher sales and potential for offering greater convenience for customers. But this medium offers many more benefits, which will be discussed in the next section. A large number of organizations from within and outside the financial sector are currently offering e-banking which include delivering services using Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) phones and Interactive Television (iTV).
Many people see the development of e-Banking as a revolutionary development, but, broadly speaking, e-banking could be seen as another step in banking evolution. Just like ATMs, it gives consumers another medium for conducting their banking. The fears that this channel will completely replace existing channels may not be realistic, and experience so far shows that the future is a mixture of “clicks (e-banking) and mortar (branches)”. Although start up costs for an internet banking channel can be high, it can quickly become profitable once a critical mass is achieved.
