It sounds for all the world as if the long-anticipated explosion of home banking is under way. But sounds, of course, can be deceiving.
To be sure, banking from an electronic device in the home - or from other remote, nontraditional locations - has become one of the industry's hot topics.
Even chief executive officers have shed their historical apathy on such matters; some have become vocal and enthusiastic advocates of the new approaches to customers broadly defined as alternative delivery systems.
If the CEOs have gotten with the program, can there be any doubt a revolution has begun that will ensure a place for their institutions on the vaunted information highway?
In fact, doubts persist, and on multiple levels.
Aside from the still-nagging questions about the ratio of hype to reality on home banking and other interactive consumer services, many observers wonder whether bankers have the strategy and fortitude needed to play a part - or even to preserve a role for themselves - in an electronic setting very different from the business venues to which they are accustomed.
In an unusual burst of entrepreneurial energy, top retail bankers and their technology experts are jockeying for on-line positions against both traditional and nontraditional competitors. Their services, ranging from basic telephone inquiries to direct personal computer connections to electronic commerce on the Internet, have helped to magnify the buzz emanating from the likes of Microsoft Corp., AT&T Co., Time Warner, Viacom, and Sony.
But like these and other corporate giants, who each claim to have a certain fix on where the world is headed, bank executives seem more inclined to debate technical and strategic alternatives than to coalesce around some coherent vision of the future.
Which seems only natural for that world aborning known as cyberspace, where chaos seems to be the norm, and where, according to Time Warner chairman Gerald Levin, "all forms of communication are possible - the good, the bad, and the unpredictable."
To call the recent flurries of activity mind-boggling or perplexing would be an understatement. Technology is advancing, products are being announced, strategic alliances are being formed, and old paradigms are being shattered at breakneck speed, creating uncertainty for business planners at every turn.
The good news for confused bankers may be that no one can keep pace with it all. The playing field may not be the level one that bankers fought for in their regulated markets over the last two decades, but all participants - fearsome Microsoft and humble community bank alike - are embarking on the interactive adventure from essentially the same starting line.
It might not even be a bad idea to wait a while before acting, indulging some old-fashioned bankerly conservatism in the interest of letting the pioneers take the proverbial arrows in the back.
But that raises questions about controlling one's destiny - and these seem to have acquired greater urgency than ever, largely due to technology.
Three jolts within seven days in May typified the business upheaval from which no financial institution can be insulated:
* MCI Communications Corp. entered into an alliance with News Corporation Ltd., including a potential $2 billion investment by the global telecommunications and transaction-processing behemoth in Rupert Murdoch's burgeoning media empire.
* Microsoft and the NBC television network announced a similar alliance. Without being specific about dollars changing hands, they said they intend to marry the General Electric subsidiary's "content" with Microsoft software and on-line network programs.
* BankAmerica Corp. and NationsBank Corp. got together and agreed to buy Meca Financial Software, a competitor of Microsoft in the personal financial software market.
If the Meca deal, for $35 million, seems out of the MCI or Microsoft league, think again. It is part and parcel of the converging trends in technology and in corporations' proclivity to close ranks when they perceive a mutual benefit. It reflects the resolve of those two influential banks, and others they hope to bring in as co-investors, to control their destiny as they play alongside the biggest names in interactive computer services.
The pending Meca acquisition may, in fact, be one of the defining events in home banking history, one of those rare points where talk turns to action. The consequences of that action could be as broad and deep within banking as MCI's and Microsoft's initiatives will be in mass media.
And given the technological convergences, banks conceivably could be delivering a version of Meca's Managing Your Money software over MCI transmission channels to the same screen that customers use for viewing entertainment programs, receiving news text and sports results, and sending electronic mail.
For the moment, and for months if not years to come, such a scenario will qualify as hype.
But more and more bankers and observers of their industry see it as a signpost. If not all their actions have been quite so bold as the BankAmerica-NationsBank deal for Meca, bankers are increasingly convinced of the need to prepare for new business realities.
"You can say it's all hype, but to my mind something is really happening," said David Van L. Taylor, a group executive at the Bank Administration Institute in Chicago. "The information superhighway is in the picture somewhere, and so is Microsoft, and unfortunately, many bankers feel they are way behind the curve on this."
Mr. Taylor has been immersed in this subject in recent months, working with Boston Consulting Group on a study of emerging data highway issues and their impact on banking. The first of two volumes is to be released in late June.
Like a 1993 study on retail delivery systems by BAI and First Manhattan Consulting Group, and a payment systems report last year by Furash & Co. for the Washington-based Bankers Roundtable, the BAI-BCG effort was designed to bring influential bank CEOs' attention to pressing issues that may have never approached their desks in past years.
After a recent presentation to the Bankers Roundtable, which brings together top-level bank executives, Mr. Taylor said, "To say the people were stunned may be too strong, but it was certainly a wakeup call.
"What concerns me is that except for the BankAmerica-NationsBank deal there has been virtually no coordinated response on the part of the bankers. Most are still worried about reconfiguring branches."
Mr. Taylor contrasts the tentativeness of banking's response to a recent move by nine major newspaper publishing companies to form a joint venture, the New Century Network, for developing and sharing on-line news and information services.
"They even said they want to be in the transaction business," Mr. Taylor said. "It seems like everyone wants to move in on our turf."
If Mr. Taylor seems about ready to push the alarm button, William M. Randle has already activated the air-raid sirens. Mr. Randle, senior vice president of strategic planning at Huntington Bancshares Inc. in Columbus, Ohio, is playing the role of home banking provocateur.
Not content just to steer his own company's aggressive remote service strategies or even to stump at industry conferences for more attention to the technology, Mr. Randle tells anyone who will listen that the very survival of banking is at stake.
It is no coincidence, Mr. Randle said, that traditional banks' market shares in personal financial assets, business loans, credit card loans, and other categories are falling while the electronic economy is blossoming. Economic power is shifting to a new breed of enterprise capable of "owning the information store," he said.
The most obvious of those, as Mr. Randle and like-minded people see it, is Microsoft.
"Banks are losing market share because they have allowed new competitors to redefine the industry," Mr. Randle said in a recent presentation to the Bankers Roundtable. "Microsoft is an excellent example of the potential for electronically savvy companies virtually to take over the banking business."
These are strong convictions and fighting words. But is anyone listening and acting on what they hear? How real a threat is Microsoft, and once past that question, how big is the business opportunity over which Mr. Randle and his Redmond, Wash., adversary are picking their fight?
Answers don't come easily.
"It's incredible to think about who all is involved - the banks, hardware and software companies, telecommunications and cable TV, the on- line computer services," Mr. Taylor said. "It's time to try to begin to make some sense of it."
"The truth is, we're each feeling our way, all trying to make sense of cyberspace and turn it to our advantage," Mr. Levin of Time Warner said recently, as quoted in Editor & Publisher.
Some banking strategists puzzle over basic questions about market potential.
Are all of the nearly 100 million U.S. households fair game, or just the 30 million or so with personal computers? Can the Internet, the supposed prototype of the information superhighway, fulfill its promise as a delivery system to reach as many as 50 million potential customers worldwide?
There are also conflicting opinions about delivery devices, ranging from basic phones to screen phones to PCs or, even further out on the futuristic spectrum, interactive television.
According to consumer research by American Banker and others, half the population has already done some banking business by telephone. Studies increasingly indicate that many people prefer to do their banking by means other than visiting the bank, and screen phones get a positive response.
"We're indifferent to which device wins," Mr. Randle said. "I'm focused on serving the customer by providing more convenient access to information."
After surveying bankers last year, Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., concluded that too many were neglecting PC-based opportunities, having been discouraged by past failures.
"We make a conservative estimate that 40% of households will have PCs by 2000," said William M. Bluestein, Forrester's research director, who tracks home banking developments. Bankers should wake up to the fact that "PCs will be concentrated in the middle- and upper-income brackets," which tend to be financially astute and interested in Quicken personal finance software and other interactive services.
"Banking will be very much part of an interactive future that includes entertainment and finances," Mr. Bluestein said. "Whether the bankers are ready to get there is another question."
Given the market-research and hardware uncertainties, conversations at this early stage often turn into what might be termed friend-versus-foe arguments. The outlook here is typically hazy, but there is broad agreement that no organization can approach the information superhighway on its own. Hence the almost daily announcements of various types of alliance, joint venture, and equity partnership among some of the biggest and richest names in media and technology.
Microsoft, the world's biggest software company, has its fingers in many of those pies. Yet it epitomizes all competition-cooperation debates, and some bankers perceive it as THE enemy.
Chairman Bill Gates has done little to endear himself to an industry that happens to be one of his biggest customers, beginning with his comment in the July 11, 1994, Newsweek that banks are "dinosaurs."
His drive to dominate the "gateways" to interactive networks, perhaps collecting fees with each connection, is seen to threaten bankers' transaction-processing hegemony. And his failed bid to acquire Intuit Inc., maker of the market-leading Quicken, seemed to confirm bankers' worst fears about his intentions.
"The level of concern has since fallen off," said Mr. Bluestein at Forrester Research.
"The good news for bankers was that Bill Gates found the transaction market innovative and interesting," Mr. Bluestein said. "But the bad news was that he found this market innovative and interesting."
And the failure to complete the Intuit merger does not change Mr. Gates' stripes.
Mr. Randle of Huntington warns that Microsoft, perhaps not alone among high-technology stalwarts, has the means, motivation, and opportunity to interpose its software and, more important, its powerful brand name between consumers and their banks.
Mr. Randle's worst nightmare is that customers will come to believe they are using "the Microsoft Bank," or at least Microsoft as the conduit to an information menu of which banking will be only an incidental part.
None of this bothered Chase Manhattan Corp., First Chicago Corp., Michigan National Corp., and U.S. Bancorp, the original partners in developing the banking portion of Microsoft's Money software. These and at least eight other sizable retail banks are reportedly close to announcing an alliance with Intuit's Quicken.
Intuit chairman Scott Cook has friends in the banking industry and claims he is so focused on helping ordinary people with their finances - in part through direct computer connections to their banks - that it would be silly to consider "becoming a bank."
"Banks have the data, the customer loyalty, and the trust," Mr. Cook said in an interview last year. He said he wants to enhance that relationship by "allowing banks to do things that have frustrated them up to this point."
Mr. Randle still worries that "control of the gateway is control of the customer. The weapon is information, and the prize is control of the payment system."
Mr. Randle's antagonism is not reserved for Microsoft. He has also been critical of MasterCard's and Visa's remote banking strategies, saying they are too influenced by "card-centric" thinking. He is just as fearful of people using a "Visa Bank network."
Responding to Microsoft, numerous companies have tried to set themselves up as bankers' friends. MasterCard's MasterBanking program and Visa's Visa Interactive have tried to head this class. Both are owned by thousands of banks and have signed up dozens of institutions for home banking.
Meca Financial Software struck the "bank-friendly" pose long before its hookup with BankAmerica and NationsBank.
So did the more diversified software companies Computer Associates and Servantis Systems. And so did Interactive Transaction Partners, a home banking facilitator 50% owned by Electronic Data Systems Corp., the powerful computer servicer that raises hackles in some circles like those stimulated by Microsoft.
These vendors emphasize banks' primacy, presenting "the look and feel of the bank" through a PC or other device. "It's bank-driven, not customer- input-driven like Quicken," said Tom Cable, vice president of Servantis, which wants to build on its foundation in bill-paying software to become a flexible, back-office utility for home banking providers.
Servantis seems more focused on customers' readiness for remote banking than on Microsoft's intentions. "Bill Gates will do what he wants to do," said Servantis senior vice president Howard S. Kossak.
"We like Bill Gates," said Michael Carter, director of corporate communications at Applied Communications Inc., an Omaha-based provider of transaction-processing systems. "We see him driving more and more transactions into the home, and ultimately that will mean people will want to do more and more business from there with their banks."
