eBanking History In Malaysia The way a bank functions does not differ much from its first inception

to peresent. We basically need a bank to:

1) Keep our money and earn some interests 2) Get financing for our car loan or mortgage 3) Provide a personal loan 4) Give credit in a plastic form; a credit card 5) Provide financial advice

Banking in general however, has changed starting from 1980s when eBanking (or electronic Banking) was introduced. While the banks still function the same way, eBanking was a new tool introduced to enable customers to transact in a more covenient way. The first electronic (though ATM is also among the first electronic outlet used by public) services in Malaysia was phone bangking. It allows the customer to get their account balances and recent transaction details faster via a telephone. It slowly gained popularity among individual and the medium size companies who used it to gain competitive advantage and manage their cash flows in a more efficient manner. For a while the customers were happy for not having to queue in the banks or wasting precious time to call the banks for the services.

But soon (in the 1990s)the customers demanded more eBanking services especially at the company level. Foreign banks like Citibank, HSBC and Standard Chartered started to introduce a new service. The customers were delighted to use a banking service through a personal computer or Desktop Banking as it was generically referred to. With Desktop Banking the companies can do much more than just balance inquiry. Full account statement download, internal and third party fund tranfers were among the services included.

Year 2000 was the biggest milestone for eBanking in Malaysia when Internet Banking was launched and commissioned. It was about time for the local banks to be the player in this new game following their foreign counterpart. The term eBanking then was "reborn" to represent paperless and Internet Banking services as well.

Our Malaysian Banks have come a long way since the first eBanking service was introduced. Presently,there are more than 10 million intenet banking users in Malaysia. While the number of internet banking users increases, there are still challenges for the banks to provide more comfort to

the customers by adopting new technology and enhancing its' security features. There are also the older generation of users who still prefer to bank the traditional way due to concerns on security and the thought that eBanking has swept away the human touch in banking.