About 2,500 NAB Net banking customers, including Apple Mac users, and a similar number of staff, are participating in the pilot, which commenced October 1.
-The new product is HTML based and doesn't require a JAVA Applet, therefore it's available on a wide range of browsers and OS platforms including Apple Mac and Linux," the National's head of Internet and e-solutions, Mike Durrant, told ZDNet Australia. -It works on Linux but we don't officially support the Linux platform," he added.
According to Durrant, the National has had a lot of demand from Apple users, and a number of Linux customers have already signed up to take part in the pilot. -The feedback we're getting from them is that they're happy with it and it works," Durrant said, adding that only minor problems with things like screen resolution had arisen.
Along with improvements to its interface the other main enhancement to its new Net banking release is portability, following the removal of digital certificates. The new service utilises 128-bit SSL encryption.
"We've implemented industry standard security the same as all our competitors and as a consequence of that removed digital certificate requirement from the new product," Durrant said.
Removed digital certificates means Internet banking will be available to National users across home and work environments, as well as to those travelling. The current service requires online bankers to download their digital certificate onto a particular machine, leaving them restricted to using that PC unless they import the digital certificate to another machine via floppy disc.
A banking platform that utilises digital certification consequently leans towards greater habitual usage - as a result the National has for sometime been plagued by peak-hour traffic jams at particular times of the day.
The pilot of the new service, which effectively has the same feature set as current product, should be completed in mid November followed by a market launch to the public in late November, -depending on pilot feedback".
With over 400,000 online banking customers, the National expects migration to be complete by the end of March 2002.
Linux's desktop share is soon to overtake Apple's share.
However, good to see that the NAB is aware of the changes taking place in many small to medium sized businesses towards more secure and reliable operating systems.