During October two independent studies were published by research agencies documenting an enormous growth of online banking users in Europe and in the USA. Although we in VIP are usually sceptic about absolute numbers stated in these surveys, their comparison and concluding trends are worth looking at. It shows that banks are successful in convincing their clients of the safety of their Internet transactions. This still remains a problem of Internet shops, as for them trusting the safe and easy payment is often the key for convincing the critical mass of customers.

The prime agency Datamonitor predicts for the end of 2002 almost 49 million European customers of online banking, which was a significant increase compared to 23 million in the year 2000. The number of users keeps growing despite a decrease of investment into e-banking technologies, which in the last year in Europe dropped by one fifth down to 1,7 billion USD. Currently the highest number of clients of these services is in Great Britain (9,8 mil), Germany (8,5) and Scandinavia (8,2). Datamonitor expects a growth of the number of clients of these services also in France (currently 4,7 mil), Italy (4,6) and Spain (not quite 4 mil.).

The study of the renown agency eMarketer is, for a change, focusing on the North-American market. According to their statistics a number of households in the USA using online banking services will grow up to 21,2 million by the end of the year (an increase from last year by 23%). The number of households, which realise their bank transactions via Internet, is going to double in the period 2001-2005.