Future Directions
Bendigo Bank plans to consolidate Pay Anyone, BPay, and transfers into a single process to simplify things for customers. There will also be support for multiple signature accounts, where both or more have to sign. In addition, file downloading to MYOB, QuickBooks and CSV formats will be supported, as well as payroll file uploading. Share Trading will also be introduced.
Usability
The system was fairly slow, even with an ISDN connection. Although the other banks also use an encrypted connection, this was noticeably slower.
When paying bills, there's no indication of your account balance, to check you have enough funds. You need to go back to the account balance area, and then back to BPay.
Seeing your transactions is a three click process, rather than giving you quick access to what you need most frequently - the last month's transactions.
The schedule transactions function is limited to a single future payment, or monthly. There is no option for a weekly, quarterly, six monthly, or annual frequencies of payments.
The steps to send an e-mail were not immediately obvious, and took us a few moments to work out.
Conclusion
A solid offering, with a simple interface but could be improved by some shortcuts, and saving regular payees. Customers in rural settings will get most of what they want, especially for multiple signatures.
Rating 3 / 5.
ZDNet's e-banking special report compares the online offerings of Australia' s leading banks.
Bendigo Bank is not online everywhere yet. And not in the City of Bayswater, Perth, Western Australia.