Lloyds Bank Electronic Cheque Book
Colin Henderson
As a rep of one of those paranoid banks, I couldn't resist a rebuttal to
this rather exaggerated claim.
We have full transactional capability, online mortgage and MasterCard
applications, Stock trading, and commencing in June ful statement
download.
Banking is changing very fast, and any bank which has not online
transactions as a minimum today, is out of the loop, and will likely have
difficulty catching up.
I am in Canada, but if you look a little closer at the British Banks, I
suspect you may be pleasantly surprised.
PS check your newsgroup names ...... there is a typo (Prion???)
______________
Colin Henderson
mbanx (Division of Bank of Montreal)
hend...@msn.com
hend...@email.msn.com
hend...@psionworld.net
jfmezei <"[nospam]jfmezei"@videotron.ca> wrote in article <3387D083.79F@vid
eotron.ca>...
>Banks are paranoid whenever computers are concerned, and are scared
>shitless when public access to a bank computer is concerned.
>
>Yet, they have no problem allowing me access to my bank accounts
>for the same transactions by telephone with only a 3 digit password I
>cannot change regularly.
>
>But before they allow actual transactions on the internet, they will
>probably require 2000 bit encryption schemes.
>
>Banks charge extra for computer services because their paranoia results
>in much higher costs for them. If they had the same levels of security
>for both computer and telephone accesses, computer accesses wouldn't
>cost any more than telephone banking.
>
>And heck, the day a bank can send my bank statements over internet
>e-mail, I'll gladly switch. BUt it will be a while before bank security
>depts allow such schemes. (unfortunatly).
>
>Until then, just use the cheaper telephone banking. It is sometimes
>quicker anyways.
>
jfmezei
Colin Henderson wrote:
>
> As a rep of one of those paranoid banks, I couldn't resist a rebuttal to
> this rather exaggerated claim.
> We have full transactional capability, online mortgage and MasterCard
> applications, Stock trading, and commencing in June ful statement
> download.
But if security requirements were relaxed to be the same as paper mail
which the banks have no problems using for all but shipment of actual
credit cards, then standard applications and networks could be used.
Not only would this make it a LOT cheaper to the banks (and eventually
cheaper to customers and higher dividends to shareholders), but it would
not tie customers to particular platforms.
When banks come out with their proprietary solutions to on-line banking,
they may incorporate security to please their security depts, but they
will likely also use non-exportable encryption schemes (Canada is
prevented by Bill Clinton from exporting encryption schemes).
While these proprietary solutions may be easier to support from the
bank's point of view, they are useless to the power users who already
have their own software which they would prefer to use.
ALEX (remember?) was used most by those with PCs/MACs, but Bell insisted
on designing it for those that had those videotext telephones and
refused to admit that most users had 9600 baud modems and restricted
their service to
2400 baud (because that is what their videophones were limited to).
I want to be able to DOWNLOAD a statement (or capture it as it flows
through my modem). I don't want to be bothered with slow proprietary
software that prevents my automating access and storing the data where I
want it. Powr users don't want fancy graphics, they want easy and quick
access to the data. (hence the total failure of ALEX because BELL
misunderstood who their customers were).
The more complex the access, the less likely it will be used by multiple
platforms. The more basic the access, the more likely you'll be able to
use your PSION for banking.
If you stick to open standards at least you don't have to worry about
supporting multiple platforms. I did not download the 128 bit version of
Netscape because I beleive software should be international and will not
pay for a service that forces me to use a USA only piece of software
(128bit).