Classroom Companion: Business

Box 6.2 E-Banking
 
Chapter 6 · Digital Goods and Services

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reduced transaction costs. Some banks 
are “virtual banks,” meaning that they 
only offer online e-bank services and 
are only present on the Internet.
For an e-bank, it is essential to pro-
vide strong security measures including 
the use of strong cryptographic proto-
cols for both message transfer and user 
authentication. To provide a complete 
e-banking service, cooperation between 
stakeholders at different business levels is 
necessary. This is illustrated in 
.
Fig.
6.2
. 
The user is accessing their e-bank appli-
cation through their laptop over the 
Internet and is authenticated via their 
smartphone. In Norway, this authentica-
tion service is called Mobile Bank ID.
The authentication of the user 
takes place over the GSM/3G/4G/5G 
network by first authenticating the 
smartphone of the user and, thereaf-
ter, sending a onetime password via 
SMS. The onetime password is then 
returned to the bank from the laptop 
to complete the authentication pro-
cess. The independent stakeholders 
are the bank, the authentication pro-
vider, the mobile network operator, 
and the Internet provider. Note that 
cooperation between different business 
layers and within the same business 
layer is needed to provide a complete 
e-banking service. For example, mobile 
authentication may take place over two 
mobile networks: the home network of 
the user and a visited network if the 
user accesses the bank from another 
country.
User
iPhone
Mobile ISP
Authentication
process
Laptop
Internet
E-bank
application