ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank offer a whole lot of services in cyberspace. These include statement of accounts, transferring of funds from one's own accounts to third party accounts, payment of utility bills, requests for cheque books and opening of fixed and recurring deposits etc.

"`Infinity', the Internet banking platform of ICICI Bank, has a user base of nearly 4 lakh across the country. The figure was as low as 1,10,000 in March 2000. The B2B initiatives of the bank have been extended to 241 companies." said Mr Ganjoo.

`Infinity' offers two kinds of products: one for individuals and small business enterprises and the other for corporates having an annual turnover of more than Rs 50 crore.

"Internet banking helps reduce the load on the bank staff and the transaction cost is the lowest as compared to other electronic delivery channels. Banks which are not offering this service will be forced by customers and competitors to do so in the near future. Internet banking is an extension of ATM and tele-banking services," he said.

Said HDFC Bank's in charge of Net banking operations Vivek Gohil: "Nearly 1,500 customers are availing the services offered by us over the Net in the Chandigarh region. However, with greater awareness, the figure is likely to increase". HDFC Bank is also offering mobile banking for which it has tied up with Spice Telecom. The services which can be availed using the cell phone include requesting for cheque books, cheque status enquiry, stop payment of cheques, fixed deposit enquiry, balance enquiry and statement of accounts.

Others like IDBI Bank's vice-president P Sridhar said that the bank has tied up with Infosys to launch Net banking in the region. "We are on the verge of providing net banking services to our customers,'' he said.

Similarly, IndusInd Bank is also planning to expand its Net banking services in the next four months, said its deputy manager in charge Net banking operations J Shukla.

Said UTI Bank's assistant vice-president, Mr Mukherjee: "At the moment, we are offering basic services like statement of accounts, balance enquiry and cheque book requests over the Net. We plan to diversify our Net banking operations by April-May 2000". Centurion Bank's manager, Pushpinder Singh, was of the view that the bank does not offer Internet banking at the moment.

"However, we are updating our site and will be providing online services within a month," he said.

To provide security of transactions, banks use 128-bit encryption and the secure sockets layer (SSL) protocol for transmitting private documents over the Net. SSL is currently the most widely accepted method for performing secure transactions over the Net. Digital certificates enable participants to quickly ascertain and verify the identity of other participants.

Even if information is intercepted by a third party, it will be unable to read it. If the information received does not decrypt properly then the recipient knows that the information has been tampered with during transmission.