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Choosing Wachovia Online
Banking
The banking industry continues to move towards a paperless
business environment. Paperless checking services require a
high level of integration of not only systems and technologies,
but agreements in clearing practices and other banking
function.
Recently Wachovia online banking moved to the top of the market
in providing these kinds of services through a partnership with
Accenture, CheckFree, Corillian, and Microsoft. Wachovia online
banking now provides a much richer set of functionality, and
equally as important, a broader set of access to non-Wachovia
accounts using the CheckFree capabilities. The newest version
of the software was standard for all new bank customers, and
then existing customers were gradually converted to the new
systems and user interfaces.
As with all conversions of this form, the current customers of
Wachovia online banking may have found the richness of the new
systems somewhat daunting at first but they gradually got used
to the advanced functions provided. The acceptance of this
latest version of Wachovia online banking was hopefully aided
by the fact that many folks of the original customer base were
probably involved in the requirements development phase of the
program. This software was only developed following a most
extensive and purposeful program that asked their customers
what their needs were.
Features
The fully-featured Wachovia online banking capability provided
customers to interact easily between accounts, and has a wide
variety of self-service functions such as updating user
profiles, ordering checks, and changing addresses. Closer
integration with CheckFree has enabled Wachovia online banking
to become most proficient at electronic billing and payment.
Other online capabilities include access to Wachovia’s online
brokerage services. Wachovia online banking will continue to
provide electronic and wireless alerts and the ability to view
check images.
As we move more and more into a paperless environment for
banking, the focus will move less away from offering feature
rich capabilities such as the new Wachovia online banking
services offer, but also focus on the usability and ease of
interactions issues that most of these systems still exhibit.
That is why Wachovia is hoping that their latest versions of
the online capability will also be more intuitive and,
therefore, more popular with their customers. Perhaps, the
Wachovia online banking capability may even become a feature of
Wachovia’s banking services that attract new customers.
Tips On Using Online Banking
Online banking is perhaps the single most important banking
advance in the last twenty years. However, it should be
carefully used. The most difficult area is in bill paying as
there are still many stores and services that require a paper
check and are not set up to receive electronic payments. With
these accounts you must check your Wachovia online banking
payment screens so that you can gauge when these checks will
reach the credit card or service. Then allow for the credit
card or services own payment processing time. By doing this you
will realize that you may have to allow up to ten days for
these accounts to show that the payment has been processed.
This will help avoid unnecessary late fees.
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