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Small businesses want Web banking basics
By Bankrate.com
 Despite
the hoopla surrounding bank Web site launches of small business
e-marketplaces or account aggregation services, small businesses
owners are not impressed. Entrepreneurs want the basics when it
comes to banking services -- the ability to check checking account
balances, view a list of checks and deposits that have cleared,
and transfer funds between accounts at their bank, according to
a recent study by Barlow Research Associates Inc.
The discrepancy between what banks are introducing
as part of their small businesses offerings and the services small
businesses say they desire and expect from their bank's Web site
is one of the contradictions found in the study titled In-Depth
Market Analysis: Small Business Internet Banking.
The study also indicates that 30 percent of the banks
do not offer small businesses Web access to combined statements
with information from all company accounts. Forty percent of banks
said that small business owners did not have the ability to place
a stop payment order on a check at their Web site. These features
were ranked by small businesses respectively as fourth and fifth
in importance.
In addition, the report found that, contrary to popular
belief, a bank does not need to be a regional money center to provide
the Internet banking services small businesses want. Of 11 community-bank
Web sites that were ranked according to the same methodology as
14 large banks, two community-bank sites outscored their larger
cousins.
Increasingly, small businesses will expect their banks
to provide Internet banking services, and banks have an opportunity
at their Web site to cement their relationships with their small
business customers.
Are you satisfied with your bank's Internet services?
What changes in those services would you like to see?
-- Posted: May 16, 2001
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