Rural bank provides online banking services to urban, countryside clients

DAVAO CITY – Rural bank clients in Mindanao, and including many urban bank clients too, could now avail of the convenience of online banking from a leading rural bank, which even many commercial banks have yet to offer.

The One Network Bank, with the largest network in Mindanao, would now connect all, except four, of its 75 branches in its online banking services, other than its ATM services.

“That means, that anybody can deposit in any of the ONB branches for a credit to a savings or checking account in any of the ONB branches,” said Alex Buenaventura, president of the ONB.

That means also, he said, that any ONB savings account depositor can withdraw from any of the ONB branches, and any ONB checking account holder or their payees can encash their checks in any of the ONB branches.

“Anybody can deposit a check in any of the ONB branches fro credit to any ONB savings or checking account, and any ONB depositor can inquire on balance, update the bankbook, or request for a statement of account in any of the ONB branches,” he said.

“Many thought that we were doing online banking when we started our ATM services five years ago,” he said. “But it’s not online banking, just being connected.”

He said the ONB started online banking in October last year, but it was only last month when it was really fully implemented after the bank purchased its own server.

“We are the only bank which also owns the software,” he said.

He said that only four branches would not be served by online banking, although its ATM services would serve as the bank’s electronic service to clients. These are the branches in Sta. Maria in Davao del Sur, Maragusan in Davao del Norte, Manay in Davao Oriental, and Libungan in Sultan Kudarat.

“These are areas that the telcos [telephone companies] have no interconnection facilities,” he said. For the menaime, “these branches would still be remotely interconnected to our central system but that their link is what we call ‘distributed’”.

Distributed connection means that processing of data would still go to the branches for verification, unlike the current connection “where all data-processing, including ATM transactions, would only go to our central data server”.

In this kind of transaction alone, an ATM processing would take about six minutes. “Now it’s only about two minutes or less,” he said.

“In our past ATM transactions, for instance, processing would first go to the central data in Sasa [12 kilometers north of downtown] and then to the branch where the depositor owns an account, and then back again to the central office data,” he said.

“This distributed kind of connection has posed two problems for us in the ATM transactions alone: the undebited and the undispensed cash,” he said. “The problem with undispensed cash, it would take two weeks to verify and to have your cash returned. In undebited cash, we have 85 percent recovery, with the 15 percent of those denying they ever got money.”

Losses to undebited cash transactions in the ATM was about P50,000 “but there was one month that it reached P300,000”. “We can not afford errors like that. That’s why we have to update and upgrade our system.”

“Our online banking has made ATM and other electronic processing much faster, easier and convenient,” he said. He said not all banks have online banking system yet.

He said that ONB’s central server also host other electronic data processing of its accounting division.

ONB spent P12 million in developing the software and including the purchase of the hardware, expenses would reach P30 million.

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