Before the advent of online banking in the present era of electronic communication, managing your money and finances required that you go to a physical bank location to speak to a banker, or that you send checks through the mail, which was a slow process and was sometimes faulty.
With Internet banking; however, you can access your financial funds from anywhere in the world at any time. Online bank accounts allow for near-instantaneous payment of bills, ordering products from online vendors without having to go to the store, and they offer an expansive capacity to transfer funds between bank accounts through a seamless virtual interface.
Before online banking, paper statements were mailed to your house and depended on the effectiveness of the mail service and your own conscientiousness and organization so that you do not misplace your financial records. Online, or paperless, statements are a feature of online banking that creates a permanent online file database of your financial transactions and also helps preserve the environment. Online bill payment also saves you effort and money on envelopes and stamps, in addition to offering you the convenience of an integrated financial model.
While many banks offer online bank accounts, including checking accounts and saving accounts, they are not all identical in terms of the services they offer. When considering the best online banking options, it is important to consider the particular features that different banks and credit unions offer for their online bank accounts. Chase Mobile Text Banking, for example, is a free service that, besides standard banking tools, offers the ability to manage your money through mobile devices, including Text Banking, which allows you to make transactions and transfers through a simple text message.
Chase Bank also offers a banking feature which allows you to create a budget for your money, track purchases, set spending targets, and find ways to save your money – all for free. It is often also easy to link your online bank account to other electronic financial services, such as Microsoft Money or QuickBooks to help you manage your money more efficiently and effectively. Chase QuickPay, another service, offers account-to-account transfers so that you can quickly and easily pay back a friend or family member – even if they live at a great distance.
With the advent of online banking, there are often concerns about the safety and security of your financial information and records. Typically, online bank accounts offer extensive fraud protection, identity theft protection, and state of the art online security platforms for their Internet banking interfaces.
Like most Internet accounts, an online bank account can only be unlocked by a personal user name and password, which are important to keep secure. Many banks offer 24/7 customer support to deal with cases of fraud, though this is an important feature to investigate when you are considering opening an online bank account and comparing banks. With an online checking account, you can rest assured that your money is safe and readily-accessible to only you.
