While one third of Britons now have access to the Internet, less than a quarter of these are prepared to bank online, according to a new poll. Security scares and a preference for personal service are the most common reasons cited for consumer wariness.
The research was undertaken on behalf of e-banking systems supplier Corillian by NOP, among a sample of 1837 UK consumers in December 2000.
The findings reveal that while 35 per cent of the UK population claim to have access to the Internet, less than a quarter of these would use the Web to bank online. When asked which factors put them off banking over the Internet:
* almost half the online population (49%) said they felt the Internet was not safe - fears over Internet safety were strongest amongst women (51%) and people in the north of England (53%);
* one in three (35%) said they preferred face to face advice;
* almost one in 10 people (9%) said they were put off e-banking because the banks seemed to make mistakes over the Internet - women were almost three times more likely then men to focus on bank errors (14% to 5%), as were customers over the age of 45 (19% compared to 3% of under 25 year olds);
* seven per cent of people said they felt the Internet was too slow; and
* six per cent of people said they already had too many passwords to remember on the Internet.
Corillian, which recently signed its first European customer and entered a partnership with Unisys to deliver account aggregation services to UK banks, has just released test results for its Voyager platform undertaken by US retail bank Wachovia. The benchmarking indicates that the system can support an enrolled user base of 3.69 million people and comfortably handle up to 4800 concurrent users.