online banking
Online banking is doing your banking on a computer or phone through your bank's website or app, without joining any queue at the branch.
In plain English
Nobody under forty has stood in a banking hall for the fun of it. Yet not too long ago, checking your balance meant physically going there, taking a number, and waiting behind someone arguing with the cashier about a wrongly debited ₦2,000.
Online banking is the reason those days are mostly gone. It simply means you log into your bank's website or app with your details, and from there you can check your balance, move money, pay bills, or print a statement, all without a banker in sight.
A trader in Kano can log into her account at 11pm after closing her shop to send ₦85,000 to a supplier in Lagos, and the supplier can see it land before he even wakes up. Neither of them needed to see a human being to make that happen.
In the United Kingdom, someone might log into their online banking to set up a standing order for rent, then check it again from their phone on the train, all in the space of a coffee break.
For the Nigerian abroad sending money home, online banking is often the calm engine behind the scenes. You initiate a transfer from your UK or US bank's website, it converts the money, and it lands in your mother's account in Enugu, all before she has finished her morning tea.
People sometimes confuse online banking with mobile banking. They overlap a lot, but online banking usually means the website version you use on a laptop or desktop, while mobile banking is the app version built for your phone. Either way, the bank branch is no longer the only door into your account.
A civil servant in Abuja logs into her bank's website on Sunday evening, checks that her salary of ₦180,000 has entered, pays her electricity bill of ₦12,500 online, and closes the laptop, all without leaving her sitting room.
Questions people ask
Is online banking safe?
It is generally safe once you protect your login details, use a strong password, and never share the one time PIN sent to your phone. Most losses happen because someone was tricked into giving that information away, and not since the bank's system itself was broken into.
Do I need a smart phone to use online banking?
No. Online banking traditionally works on any computer with internet access through your bank's website. A smart phone gives you the added option of mobile banking through an app, but it is not required for the online version.
What is the difference between online banking and internet banking?
Nothing really. They are two names for the same thing, using your bank's website to manage your account remotely. Some banks in Nigeria use one term in their marketing and the other in their instructions, but the service is identical.
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