Which bank has the best online banking?

laurel7172

Co-op/smile is pretty good for service most of the time.

bristol_pilot

Another vote for Halifax online service.

tapeworm

which? recently carried out a survey of online banking security of the top ten high street banks.

halifax and abbey were rated poor
alliance and leicester and hsbc were rated average
first direct, lloyds tsb, nationwide and rbs were rated good
barclays came top with an excellent rating.

fraudsters dont just using phishing to commit fraud but also keylogging.

Lokolo

tapeworm wrote: »

which? recently carried out a survey of online banking security of the top ten high street banks.

halifax and abbey were rated poor
alliance and leicester and hsbc were rated average
first direct, lloyds tsb, nationwide and rbs were rated good
barclays came top with an excellent rating.

fraudsters dont just using phishing to commit fraud but also keylogging.

If you are clever enough (or just common sense and have anti virus and don't go on dodgy !!!!!! sites), most of the time it wouldn't matter.

book12

HBOS and Barclays online banking are the best, in terms of usability and security.

If you don't mind using card readers, Barclays is the way to go.

If you want to know more about the banks online banking system, you could go to each of their website, and see an 'online demo' of their online banking. Hopefully, by then, you know which one you will like best.

Paul_Herring

Of the ones I('ve) use(d) that aren't dire, I've found them all to be much the same. They work, they do what I need, and haven't had any problems with them in the past couple of years.

LTSB, Nationwide I find acceptable. Barclays have had their moments recently, but on the whole I personally haven't been affected.

Of credit-card (only) online accounts: Halifax, Amex acceptable. Egg dire with respect to downtime. Personal empirical evidence would suggest Sunday evenings are particularly bad.

My online (and offline incidentally) experience with Abby was so bad I closed the account within a couple of days of using their website. Literally.

No experience with HSBC, Natwest, A&L.

Thomas_Crown

Lloyds TSB - Excellent

Nationwide - Very Good

gt94sss2

tapeworm wrote: »

which? recently carried out a survey of online banking security of the top ten high street banks.

halifax and abbey were rated poor
alliance and leicester and hsbc were rated average
first direct, lloyds tsb, nationwide and rbs were rated good
barclays came top with an excellent rating.

fraudsters dont just using phishing to commit fraud but also keylogging.

I haven't seen the Which? survey but when I was researching card readers some time ago, the stats showed that of the big banks HSBC (inc FD?) suffered the lowest losses as a result of online banking.

At the time, HSBC put it down to their investment in 'behind the scenes' checks. They have also ruled out card readers like most other big banks in the UK as they don't believe they are secure..

Regards
Sunil

rb10

thriftymanc wrote: »

Do you use them? I have to admit I was tempted by the £5 a month... but then, as I mentioned, I googled and found tons of reviews saying that people were unable to log in for days, or payments kept failing so they ended up getting charges or going overdrawn or whatever. I'd rather not have the £5 if that's the case!

Really? I can only remember one time when I've been unable to log in. Halifax's online banking normally works very quickly and smoothly. You see all your accounts on the one page, with balances, and can very easily do just about any transaction.

In similar threads that have come up here previously, the general consensus is that Halifax and HSBC have the best internet banking systems.

tapeworm wrote: »

which? recently carried out a survey of online banking security of the top ten high street banks.

halifax and abbey were rated poor
alliance and leicester and hsbc were rated average
first direct, lloyds tsb, nationwide and rbs were rated good
barclays came top with an excellent rating.

fraudsters dont just using phishing to commit fraud but also keylogging.

This survey was actually about the visible security of the banks. It gave no indication as to what goes on behind the scenes - making the whole thing rather useless really. Their press release starts by saying that "Online bank accounts at Abbey and Halifax have weaker visible security measures in place than some of their rivals".

cottager

Halifax is very good, but personally I prefer Natwest. Also used Nationwide and Abbey (no!) but never HSBC, LTSB or Barclays so can't comment there.

You'll need a card reader with Natwest but they went off from the start with the full £10k on Faster Payments which was brilliant, you can very easily see and access all your accounts, clean interface, quick, use it nearly every day and never personally experienced any downtime. Part of RBS, so presumably RBS is much the same apart from different branding, but I wouldn't know having not had an account there.

I do like Halifax, have accounts there and use it quite a bit, but not getting the full show on the road yet with Faster Payments really bugs me I'm afraid! -- so Natwest is where our main current accounts are.