What is offshore internet banking? Also known as online offshore banking, Internet banking, electronic offshore banking, PC banking, or home banking it is an offshore banking service, where all types of transactions are conducted online. Money transfers, bill payments, checking balances and other banking operations are carried out without actually living home or office through specially designed software or a website.
Just few years ago only few offshore banks provided offshore internet banking services. These were the most developed and future-oriented financial institutions. At that time banks showed little incentive to offer their customers such service, since they saw very low demand for such a service.
Nowadays offshore internet banking has become an important complement to traditional offshore banking services. For those people, who use offshore services telephone, fax and Internet banking are the main tools for managing their finances, since they are unable to come to the bank physically. In addition, many people choose to conduct banking transactions online instead of losing time by visiting bank physically. Consequently offshore internet banking gained particular importance and today offshore bank account is almost never offered without convenient offshore internet banking services. The survey conducted by National Research & Polling Bureau shows that 16% of the people, who use offshore banking services regard accessibility and convenience of the offshore services as a chief factor for decision-making. Therefore recently offshore banks started to offer online services together with the basic banking products they offer.
What are the basic benefits of offshore internet banking?
The basic benefits that offshore internet banking offers are: effective tracing of your bank transactions, inspecting and managing your bank account and also paying bills online. Online banking allows you to access your account online and extract your account history and current balance on the account. In addition offshore internet banking also allows covering mortgage and rent, bills of utility, garbage, phone and cable companies and many other expenses in the most convenient way.
Large international banks such as Lloyds TSB and HSBC that have global presence and offer offshore bank accounts were the first to realize flexibility and convenience that comes with online banking and start offering such service to their clients. Those who live in different time zone, work overtime and make transactions in different currencies, offshore internet banking may prove to be the best solution for them. Nowadays online banking has become so important and widespread that it is offered as a part of standard package offered by most of the banks to both onshore and offshore customers.
What type of online banking access do banks provide?
There is a difference among banks based on type of online banking services they offer. There are some banks that provide 
special software that is installed on the hard drive of your PC and allows you to access your bank accounts only from one computer, while there are banks that provide online portal to their clients. In latter case no software installation is required and advantages of it are that you can access your account virtually from everywhere in the world: from home, office, even from summer house as long as you have Internet connection. In addition you can do any time you want, even 05:00 in the morning.
Do I need online banking?
Well, if you make only few transactions a month, then it may not be feasible for you to set up the online banking service, however if the number of monthly transactions are 20 or more, then you will probably want to set it up especially if not all of your transactions are done in one day and you will need to go to the bank office several times.
How much does this cost?
The cost varies across banks, but generally it is around $5 a month. Although you have extra costs, but these extra costs save you postal costs that you would bear, if you make transactions in traditional way, travel costs and would also save your nerves.