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Showing posts from June, 2013

Online-Only Direct Banks in India, are we ready yet?

Direct banks (online banks) are very popular almost everywhere except in India. Of course you will see online banking aka e/internet banking versions of traditional banks here, but I haven't come across not a single online-only bank. Are we that much traditional not to trust anything which is online? There are indeed a number of benefits online banks offer over the traditional, biggest among them is low cost of maintenance, with minimal physical presence and absolutely no branches. A big chunk of interest rates that you get from traditional banks are eaten by their advertisements and operational costs across hundreds of their branches. Offline banks also have advantages, like depositing physical cash etc. Of course safety is a major concern but e-banking of traditional banks have been thriving in the subcontinent for the last decade and I haven't came across a single case where net banking got hacked leading to loss of money. Of the traditional internet banks, my preferen