According to EDB Business Partner's annual statistics for 2006, there has been strong growth in internet banking usage in Norway during the past year. In contrast to this, minibank usage is declining while the volume of card transactions is rising. Furthermore, the popularity of mobile banking is growing, having attracted a large number of users in 2006.
In 2006, the number of transactions processed through EDB’s internet banking systems grew by 12% while minibank usage continued to decline. Having previously dropped by 9% from 2005 to 2006, minibank use fell by a further 1% in 2006. Launched in the summer of 2006, mobile banking has been adopted by around 5% of the banking customers that were offered the service.
These trends are an indicator of what we can expect for the banking customer of the future. Mobile banking and card transactions will become the ‘everyday’ banking channels, commented Eva Trasti, EVP of bank and finance at EDB. These channels will be used to make transfers between accounts, pay bills, buy goods and services and for similar transactions. We are seeing a change in the character of internet banking towards being a user-managed portal for the customer’s interaction with his or her bank, meeting the need for advisory services and a variety of changing requirements that reflect the customer’s personal situation.
At present, EDB provides operating services for its banking customers that handle four million internet banking users, and reported an increase of around 7.5% in the number of internet banking customers.
EDB is now working on a new generation of ‘event-based’ internet banking, where interaction between the customer and the bank is largely controlled and defined by the customer, with internet banking providing a broader range of existing and new products than its current offerings.