Current Services
Citibank's service, called CitiDirect, impressed us with its ease of getting started. You just have to enter your card number, and then your ATM PIN. That's it, and you're doing your banking. The service was updated in September.
However, that's where its strengths ended. Like most of the other banks, CitiDirect allows you to do the usual things like statements, transferring funds between your own, and to other accounts. You can transfer funds to accounts in other banks, and use BPay for your bills. And if you have regular payments to make, you can set up 'standing orders', though we think they should have called them 'scheduled payments'.
If you have your own finance package, you can download your information to Quicken and Microsoft Money. For other packages, you can download in OFX (Open Financial Exchange) and CSV (Comma Separated Values) formats.
For SMEs with international requirements, you can, in what appears to be unique to online banking, transfer funds to other countries. However, this is actually done through a manual process, where a bank staff member manually performs the transfer for you. You can also order bank drafts and cheques.
Like all the other banks, you can send secure e-mails and order chequebooks, statements, as well as change your PIN and contact details online.
