Online-banking: problems and perspectives

Online banking - it is an electronic payment system that enables customers of a bank or other financial institution to conduct a range of financial transactions through the financial institution's website.

Such service provides great opportunities both for banks and for their clients. It allows to carry out a number of operations, without leaving home via the Internet, spending minimum time on commercial operations. Mastering cyberspace also provides a set of advantages to banks. First of all, it allows to reduce considerable expenditures for rent and maintenance of facilities. All operations are made on the server of bank, so, there is no need to support the service which includes tracking the software of the client. Besides, with development of new technologies potential clients give preferences to those banks which provide the greatest freedom in a choice of the place, a method and a type of the performed operation. For this reason, distant service via Internet is considered to be the most priority direction of development of the modern banking sphere.

In Russia, first systems that allowed to check and manage bank accounts appeared in 1998. Avtobank launched the system «Internet service bank», which initiated the penetration of banks internet-technology on financial service market. However, today Russia faces a lot of problems that sets back the development of internet-banking.

Range of banking services

Generally, online banks bring simple tools to help their customers master their digital banking. Classical variant of online banking presents the following set of banking services:

Make deposits. Bank allows their customers 24/7 access to their deposit funds.

Make payments. Online-banking suggests: funds transfers between the customer's linked accounts; paying third parties, including bill payments and third-party fund transfers; investment purchase or sale; loan applications and transactions, such as repayments of enrollments; credit card applications; registration of utility billers and making bill payments.

Stay informed. Helpful technology allows customers save their time and keeps them in the know. It allows to view account balances, recent transactions and images of paid cheques, download bank statement and periodic account statements, order cheque books.

Technical and organizational problems of internet banking in Russia

Serious obstacle on the way of development of Internet banking is the personnel problem. Programmers, system administrators, web designers, web programmers, computer and communication protection experts, economists, marketing specialists, lawyers are necessary for development and maintenance of systems of Internet banking today. Occupational retraining of personnel is required. However, the quantity of higher educational institutions, which would train experts of automatic databases, is still next to none in Russia.

The psychological problem of financial illiteracy of the population also creates an obstacle on the way of development of Internet banking. Many people do not understand specifics of activities of bank as well as the offered products, and usage of Internet banking aggravates this situation. The official statistical agency of the European Union has published results of the last research of Europeans in which experts have defined a role of high technologies and the Internet in life of people depending on the level of their income, education and age. According to results of a research of Eurostat: in total among Europeans 47% of the population use the Internet; among citizens of Russia there are about 13%.

Effective use of Internet banking is impossible without economic development of projects on implementation and promotion of Internet services. In Russia the majority of the operating systems obviously do not cover all range of bank operations and some systems perform only information function, without a possibility of carrying out any transactions by a client. It especially concerns regions. According to questioning of eight most widespread banks in Stavropol Krai it has been established that about 37,5% of commercial banks do not offer such services (June, 2015). However, services of remote customer service are offered by these banks in Central Federal District, Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Besides, money transfer from cash in virtual becomes extremely expensive procedure for most of potential clients of online-banks in Russia. It is possible to pay in with the help of terminal or transfer from other account. In the first case bank demands the services of contractors and there are clients to pay for them. It will bring to nothing the advantage of online-banking - the reduction in cost of services. In case of money transfer from other accounts percent for service appears. The only way to avoid some additional expenses when converting currency from real in virtual, is to perform these operations in one bank. For example, if the online-bank takes the enterprise on service as the salary project.

But the Russian reality is extremely far from virtual money, and any enterprise cannot do without the real ones. Trade payables and fees are payed in cash. Cash is possible to obtain only by means of the converting of virtual money in real. In this case the clients come across the expenses on cash withdrawal.

One of the problems of development of Internet banking in Russia is the experience in bank crises. It was a middle class that suffered from it, being the main consumer of retail banking services. Being taught by that experience, they try not to hold the remains on their accounts, but use barter, cash payment.

To make matters worse, most domestic credit institutions have no proper techniques to manage bank risks connected with banking activity in the Internet. Millions of mobile devices of bank clients are connected to online-banking, so money and personal information thefts are carried out through them. The crackers make some scumware download on mobile devices and begin to manipulate them. Many clients are not keen on the gadgets they own, and therefore give the chance to criminals to exercise control over the devices. Now it is popular to use two-factor authentication by means of USB tokens or smart cards, but still this method does not guarantee protection against losses of information and money.

Conclusion

Need for development of Internet banking in the modern world is obvious. However, today the development of this service in Russia goes quite poorly. It is caused by a number of problems being obstacles in the way of development of online-banking, such as financial illiteracy of the population, lack of onlinebanking services in many organizations, high cost of services, problem of safety of Internet banking, mistrust to banks due to past experience in bank crises, lack of qualified personnel.

The listed problems require solutions. First of all, it is necessary to develop legislation on a safety issue. It can be reached using the following methods: implementation of the state control on commissioning of bank Internetapplications, including websites; initiation of obligatory insurance upon hacking of Internet-applications. Also, the following ways can be used for the development of Internet banking: the strengthened marketing offer of services, provision of trial version of Internet banking systems, reduction of tariffs for remote banking services, personnel development, free consultations and training seminars on use of services of Internet banking.

To consider perspectives of online-banking in Russia, online-banking services will be used more actively in the distant future than now, as people will gradually forget about past terrible experience in the banking sphere and become more financially literate. Therefore, there will be an integration of banking systems in each spheres of life. As technologies will develop, the banking system will become more automatized, and this sphere will experience the reduction in number of employees.