Before, if you still remember, I have talked about online saving account. Today, I will discuss about a quite similar thing which is online banking. Actually, it is quite a common trend nowadays to do banking activities online but for some countries like Malaysia (my home country), online banking is not been used widely. Maybe, the banking system there is not strongly developed yet. But, I expect online banking to be widely used in Malaysia in maybe 5 years time.

Okay, enough with some background of online banking in Malaysia. Let us talk about why we should or should not use online banking.

Advantages

From online banking, almost every transaction can be done from home. This is good as it saves a lot of our time. Now, we do not have to go down to a bank to do a transaction like transferring money from current to saving account. Before, this transaction only can be done at the bank since ATM machine cannot handle this.

By having online banking, we can monitor our account balance easily. This gives us more control over our budgeting plan (see this post about controlling main expenses). For example, I can now how many should I spend for the rest of the month by looking at the online statement. So, I dont have to wait for monthly bank statement which sometimes will not be posted at all (I am currently using National Bank as my primary bank and have not received my bank statements for the last 2 months).

Disadvantages

Some banks charge online banking under service charge. For my National Bank online banking, they charge me about $1.00 a month although they said that I will not be charged as I am an international student (Damn! I hate National Bank).

And the biggest issue about online banking is security of your account. Since you are doing your transactions online, you information may be traced by other unwanted people. And by using your information like your online banking username and password, your money can be transferred away from your account in just a few seconds!

So, what am I trying to say here?

Basically, online banking is really useful in many ways but at the same time, the risk is sometimes quite high. So, do some research about your bank. You must know the level of security they offer for online banking. Ask your friends about their experience with the particular bank. And consider looking for others review online. For the New Zealand online banking system, I would say that Raboplus (operates under the Rabobank) and ASB are still the best. So, after all, the choice is yours. Make it wisely.