Online Banking by the Numbers

Web banking is five years “young”

May 2000 marks the five-year anniversary of Online Banking Report as we publish our 60th monthly report, and coincidently, it’s also been five years since Wells Fargo first began posting customer statements on the Web, the first bank in the world¹ to do so.

Table 1

 Five Years of Web Banking

Source: Online Banking Report estimates except as noted, +/- 25%, 5/00             WW=worldwide

¹Summation (composite) of the unique users at 144 large banks tracked by PC Data and Top9.com

Last month we updated our online banking forecast, noting the uptrend in activity surrounding email payments. This month we report on the very positive trends in Web traffic and activity at financial sites For example, the ten busiest sites (Table 2) are up 84% over the past six months.

¹Stanford FCU offered Telnet-based banking prior to May 1995; also UK-based Secure Trust had an Internet banking trial in process in early 1995 but it wasn’t widely available.

Table 2

Top 10 Most-Visited Financial Services* Companies (U.S.)

millions of unique users¹

Source: PC Data Online <pcdataonline.com>; *not including financial news/quotes sites
¹Exclude estimated duplicate traffic among sites of the same company (Intuit, X.com is actual unique user total from PC Data)
²Sites: x.com, paypal; ³Sites: intuit, quicken, turbotax, qfn, insuremarket, securetax ; ⁴Sites: providian, aria, getsmart; ⁵Sites: Ameritrade, onmoney; ⁶Sites: bankone, bankoneonline, firstusa, wingspanbank; ⁷Includes overlapping visitors