By Tom Bernstein
A bank is an institution that provides financial services. The term bank comes from the Italian "banca", which is derived from German language and means BENCH.
Nowadays banks offer a wide variety of services like:
- You can open checking and saving accounts - Online Banking - Giving loans to individuals and businesses - Issuing credit cards and debit cards - Wire transfer - Cashing checks - Giving personal, private safe deposit boxes
According to the most of the public sources banks can be divided in Retail banking and Investment banking.
Retail banking deals direct with individuals and small businesses. There are some types of retail banking like: Commercial bank which refers to a bank or division of bank that deals mostly with corporation or large businesses, Community development bank which provides financial services and credit to underserved markets or populations, Postal savings banks which includes savings banks associated with national postal systems, Private banks, Offshore bank - banks under a different financial regulatory regime to the one in place in your home country, Savings banks, Building societies and Landesbanks, Ethical banks etc.
Investment Banks deals with activities on the financial market. There are some branches of Investment banks: Investment Banks which guarantee the sale of stock and bond issues and advice on mergers, and Merchant Bank which was engaged in trade financing, but nowadays, it provides capital to firms in the form of shares rather than loans.
Today, in USA, there are a lot of banks that offers a wide variety of services mentioned above. Some of the biggest are Bank of America Corp., Wachovia Corp., Citigroup Inc., SunTrust Banks Inc. and so many others. One of the greatest features that banks nowadays have it is Online Access to your account, called also Online Banking, which became one of the greatest features for each user, saving time, no long lines and saving money. Most of the banks have online banking FREE of charge. You just need a computer connected to the internet for online banking. Over the short time online banking became a separate virtual institution found only online.
Development of Bank services does not stop here, we have the Future ahead.
About the Author:
This article is the property of GOnet. The publication of this article is permitted, if the content of the article and the author box is not changed, and all links remain active. Online Banking at [ http://www.bankonlineweb.com]
Read more articles by: Tom Bernstein [/?s=author&a=Tom+Bernstein]
This article is distributed by: http://www.iSnare.com [ http://www.isnare.com]
