It has become more and more common to take care of business on line - and that includes the business of banking. The bank is "open" 24 hours a day. You can always check your account activity.
Central Pacific Bank's Information Security Official, Kenneth Newman says, "You've got the opportunity to make payments, you can set up recurring payments, you can pay your bills electronically. You can also do funds transfers between accounts and you can set those up automatically as well."
Newman says there are many benefits to on-line banking. No waiting in line with on line.
"Online banking is a green option because you've got less paper to deal with. You can get check images so you don't need paper checks any more. You can pay bills electronically so you don't need envelopes, you don't need stamps so there are a lot of benefits."
If you have a computer and if you are on line, you already know about spammers and scammers. The warnings are repeated almost daily. Naturally, if you have considered on line banking, one of your first concerns might be about it's security and safety.
"It's as safe if not safer than other transactions you might perform on the internet because it's backed by the financial institution that you trust already. And all the financial institutions use industry standard solutions to manage their security."
Because you can look at your account balance and activity any time, any day it's much easier to notice any unusual activity. That's a far cry from waiting a full month to see your statement and cancelled checks.
"And that was the way that fraud used to happen. When people got their checks in the mail, and they would get stolen out of the mail or perhaps the trash if people weren't shredding them, they could become victims that way."
