There are really great benefits and perks to online banking. You can take care of easy transactions, balance transfers, manage your financial assets and consider your banking investments - plus you have big names in the industry such as Bank of America online banking and Wachovia online banking to back up in customer service. However, although convenient and great, there are some down sides to online banking as well.

If you are mostly an offshore banking customer like myself - rarely would you go visit a branch. You have direct deposit, online checking and savings account and you manage your credit cards through online banking. Recently, I have encountered a problem in which I made two payments - both to the same credit card company, and now I am low on my checking account and I expect to pay a penalty fee for that.

I thought that the first payment did not go through so I made a second one, and it ended up that I paid both and I do not have enough funds in my checking to pay for both credit cards. So it is technical problems like these in online banking that might bring up problems. Additionally, because all technical related issues are being handled over the phone, you really do have have that face to face customer service - rather cold, technical and manual-oriented online banking service.