Online banking isn’t new, and has been improving over the last few years. You can even check your statements from a year ago via your banking website. Then you have Microsoft Money or Intuit’s Quicken to aggregate your financial statements into an easy to read dashboard. It is extremely similar to how RSS aggregators work. I have my main accounts with Washington Mutual, and they have done a great job utilizing technology and providing me with the simple information that I need. Here is a quick list of cool things I love about WAMU.

• Online statements, and summaries
• Images of checks online! (front, back, zoom, etc.)
• Email updates and alerts
• Online bill paying
• Transfer money between accounts
• Temporary credit cards for online purchases

My improvement list:

• Three factor authentication (PIN + fingerprint + card)
• SMS verification or authorization of a transacation immediately
• Vendor (utilities) request money, and you authorize (pay) with a click.
• All ATMs fee free like WAMU (not so much technology)
• Integrate “points” from credit cards into Microsoft Money
• Account cards to give people to authorize a deposit into your account online

The two themes from my list are, 1) I think they need to make online banking a bit more secure and 2) they need to push more information to the user instead of waiting for them to initialize something. With these changes, we could start to see the paper check go away completely! Each year I send dozens of checks away in the mail, and then wait for them to hit my account. I totally prefer the instant “Visa check card” log so I can track my transactions without delay, and I think these improvements would further my love for Washington Mutual.