Online banking for SMES 'extremely secure'

Date: 25th September 2008

Using the internet to pay your bills online is "extremely secured" when compared with cheque payments, a major bank has claimed.

London-based lender HSBC has said that the risk of fraud while banking online is much less than that of sending or receiving cheques.

Although the number of cheques used as payment has halved in the last decade to 890 million a year, many businesses still use them to pay their bills and operating costs.

A spokesman for HSBC said: "There is only a very minor amount of people who … use online banking … that have ever experienced, or know anybody that has experienced fraud as a result of their use of the internet.

"Fraud is far more likely to happen if someone has got your details out of your bin, [or] if they have been a little careless with their bank statements."

Research by the Cheque and Credit Clearing Company discovered that a quarter of bank account holders prefer not to write cheques for fear of fraud.

The internet can also be used to file self-assessment tax returns, which are due by January 31st 2009.