The bank claims this is the first time Canadian businesses can obtain balance and transaction reporting, make electronic payments and exchange cash management files all on a single Web site.

The launch of CIBC Business Banking coincides with new research from Carreker Corporation and Gartner Group showing an overwhelming 92 per cent of large corporations in Canada expect to use Web-enabled cash management services in the next 12 to 24 months. The September 2001 study was conducted with 15 banks in Canada and the US, 550 of their corporate clients and a number of technology providers involved in payment processes. Results of the survey reveal that in the US, only 53 per cent of large corporations surveyed currently use or expect to use such services during 2002/3.

"Most people are surprised to learn that until now, businesses in Canada have not had the same one-stop convenience as consumers for their banking," comments Pierre Giraudon, managing director, strategic services with Carreker Corporation. "Online banking was pioneered with consumers, and now those gains are being increasingly applied by banks to the more complex environment of business banking," he says.

CIBC Business Banking allows businesses to conduct a wide range of financial transactions, from real-time cash position reporting to sending electronic payments to processing their payroll. The service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, via the Internet. Customers are only required to pay for services they want.

The service is powered using technology from S1 Corporation and features built-in security controls at every level - signing on, creating transactions, authorising payments and reviewing the transaction history. It allows up to five people to authorise each payment, depending on the level of security the business wants. Each user has a 16-digit user ID and a personal password, and the audit log tracks user activity in detail, including who authorised which payments.

Steve Webster, vice-president, business deposits and payments, CIBC, says: "CIBC Business Banking is actually more secure and efficient than processing paper because we've built in different levels of control at each step along the way."

The system uses 128-bit SSL encryption to ensure the integrity of CIBC customer information, says the bank. Electronic signatures are used for payment release and a series of firewalls have been implemented for added levels of protection. Backup servers and full business recovery operations are also available to all business customers.