Online Banking in Albania

Abstract

In nowadays society, in the globalized economy, the new economy also called internet-economy has become one of the major issues of economic and technical literature. The spread of information and communications technologies, the increased use PCs, facilitating internet connectivity, as well as a wide spreading of mobile phones, have drawn attention of banks towards internet banking. Main reason that made profitable use of this channel was the need to minimize costs and to increase efficiency of banking services and at the same time to achieve customer satisfaction. Internet banking was firstly introduced in the 80s, but only in the mid-90s it was widely spread and since then, it has advanced a lot. Over the past decade, e-banking transactions have grown dramatically. E-banking in Albania was firstly used in 2002 only by American Bank of Albania (now ISP Bank). Years after there have been efforts by other banks and now the number of banks using online banking in Albania has increased. Therefore, the internet-economy, with the use of IT systems constitutes a new paradigm of business and development.