Online banking, without the worry

1. Why everyone keeps mentioning online banking. If your local branch has closed, you are not alone — a great many bank branches have shut across the UK in recent years, and banks now do most of their day-to-day work through the phone in your pocket or the computer on your desk.
2. The app or the website?. There are two front doors to online banking: the bank’s app (a button on your phone or tablet) and the bank’s website (typed into a computer).
3. Setting up, gently. Here is the most reassuring thing we tell people at our lessons in Kinson: you cannot break your bank account by looking at it.
4. The golden rules your bank lives by. These few rules are worth more than everything else in this course put together.
5. Paying someone: the name check. When you set up a payment to someone new, most UK banks now run a helpful check called Confirmation of Payee .
6. The bank that isn’t your bank. Bank-impersonation scams almost always arrive one of two ways: an urgent phone call (“your account has been compromised”) or an alarming text (“a payment has been attempted — click here to verify”).
7. The five-minute habit that keeps you safe. Here is online banking’s best-kept secret: it can make you safer than paper statements ever did, because you can look at your account any day you like — not once a month when the envelope arrives.

1. Get your banking app only from the Google Play Store on Android
2. Never log in through a link sent by text or email
3. Your bank will NEVER ask you to move money to a safe account
4. One-time codes are for typing into screens, never for reading aloud
5. Never give anyone your full PIN or full password
6. Suspicious call from the bank? Hang up, wait, then dial 159
7. Forward scam texts free to 7726, then delete them
8. Paying someone new? Check the name matches and triple-check the details
9. Glance through your payments each week and ring the bank about anything odd
10. Stuck or worried? Call 365 Techies on 01202 775566

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