Online banking is now the most common way to do your banking. It offers an easy way to maintain a budget, it saves time, provides a real time balance, and you can pay your bills without ever leaving home. That being said, is online banking safe?
Saves Time
Online banking provides an easy way to do your banking from the convenience of your home. Online Banking allows you to transfer money between accounts, order checks, view your statements, and even deposit money (at certain banks) all with the click of a button. Some banks even have a service where you can receive emails or text messages if your account is running low, a large transaction hits your account, or just with the days balance.
The cost
Most banks provide online banking and bill pay for free. If your bank is charging, it might be time to see if another bank can save you money by avoiding unnecessary fees.
Online Bill Pay
Online bill pay is an easy way to pay your bills. The savings doesn’t stop with free bill pay; the amount that the average person saves a year by using online bill pay is around $90. This savings comes from ordering checks which now cost around $26 a box, stamps, and envelopes. That isn’t bad from something that also makes your life a lot easier.
Online Bill Pay not only allows you to pay the larger companies such as Comcast and AT&T, but you can even pay friends and family if you want to. All you do is enter the persons name and address, and a reason why you are sending the payment, and the person will receive an actual check from you in the mail.
Secure
The big question that everyone asks is how secure is online banking? The answer is that online banking is extremely safe. Banks wouldn’t allow you to access your account information online if they felt there was any way for hackers to get a hold of your information. The bank would be losing a lot of money if that happened. Unless you give someone your online banking user id and password, you don’t have anything to worry about.
Online banking is the easiest way to maintain your checking account. It allows you to balance your account daily, and make sure there is no funny business happening on your account. Online banking helps prevent fraud by keeping the customer aware of transactions as they happen, allowing for a quicker response in case anything fraudulent does happen on your account.