I am a long-standing AIB customer but I recently decided to bite the bullet and sign up for online banking. When I called into the bank they gave me various numbers to allow me to log into my account online.
Some days later I was trying to pay someone for work they had done in the house but I found I couldn’t. I could only pay them up to €1,000 unless I set them up as a payee, which required something called a card reader that I knew nothing about.
I returned to my branch. They said they would send one out but never explained why they had never mentioned it before. They also told me that it would not work with my phone but that I would need to access my account on a computer.
Why do the banks make these things so difficult, and why didn’t they tell me all this in the first place? It makes me wonder whether I would have been better off sticking with the “old-fashioned” way I always used before.
Ms BH
So much for the wonders of online banking. To be fair, none of the Irish banks would be vying to be a poster child for modern approaches to banking but, even by the low bar that appears to operate here, you seem to have had a poor time of it.
Online banking done right should make it much easier to organise your financial affairs, allowing you to keep up to date with your balance at any stage and to keep track of transactions.
The other essential element of retail banking is organising payments to people – whether it is a gift for a loved one or a bill that can either arise as a one-off, such as for the work you had done in your home or a regular outgoing payment for a new service that you sign up to.
In the old days, of course, we would have had to traipse down to our local branch in hours that were friendly only to people who didn’t work and set up a direct debit, a standing order or a one-off transfer. Online, we can now do these at our convenience at home. Or at least we should be able to.
I’m not personally familiar with AIB’s online service but it appears you need both this card reader and an AIB debit card to sanction a payment to someone. Between them and your PIN number, various secure numbers are churned out and later entered by you in a process that eventually creates a payee who will remain available to you online thereafter unless you delete them.
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Seems cumbersome but it is what it is.
The issue here is that, given how critical this card reader is to any meaningful operation of your account online, how come the person helping you set it up when you visited your local branch didn’t bother mentioning it.
I’ve been in bank branches recently and they appear to have no difficulty mentioning at length various outside companies with which they offer various services, including insurers. That being so, it seems crazy that they would let someone clearly unfamiliar with establishing an online presence to leave the branch without ever drawing your attention to an essential part of the service, never mind helping you to order one of these things.
AIB didn’t seem to have any answer for that when I approached them on the subject. In fact, they totally ignored the query despite my raising it with them specifically more than once.
What they did tell me is that the card reader is used “to securely authenticate payments to protect customers’ money”.
Okay but other banks also securely authenticate payments without requiring such a clunky process – and certainly not one that you keep customers in the dark about.
The AIB spokesman did also note that customers could make “payments up to €1,000 without a card reader on the AIB mobile app”. It cites “customer security reasons” for payments over that amount requiring you to set up a payee (using the card reader).
To be honest, I don’t have much of an issue with the €1,000 limit. It appears a fairly quick and easy way to address modest but unexpected one-off bills that might arise. And I certainly understand the need for enhanced customer security intrinsic in setting up a payee online – even if I think a more modern approach to online banking would allow AIB achieve that without all the kerfuffle involved in its current offering.
But what about your discovery that you need a computer rather than a phone to use the card reader?
AIB said customers can access AIB internet banking through the browser on their phone also. So whomever you talked to at the branch was not strictly correct on this. I say “strictly” because, critically, you cannot use the card reader on the AIB online banking app on your phone. You need to open your phone’s internet browser rather than your app and access AIB online banking that way. Bizarre and certainly anything but customer-friendly.
The good news is that the bank told me it will “in the coming months” bring in a new way for customers to validate payments of more than €1,000 through the online banking app and without the need for a card reader.
So for now you will need the card reader that no one told you about but not for (too) long, hopefully.
I can see why you might think the more traditional way you banked is more appealing but internet banking is here to stay and can be very user-friendly (with a bit more effort from the banks). Security is important and the banks are correct to focus on that, given the amount of money lost each year by customers falling for online scams.
But they clearly need to invest more in the service to make it more user-friendly. And while they’re doing that, they might also invest in training branch staff to be more accurate and comprehensive in the information they provide. That alone would save them money in the long run and help them retain customers.
Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street Dublin 2, or by email to dominic.coyle@irishtimes.com with a contact phone number. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice
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