Online banking more popular than ever

The numbers of active online current, savings and investment bank accounts has more than doubled since 2000 and is set to increase to 84m by 2007, the report's authors predict.

More Britons and Germans bank online than French or Italians.

But the Scandinavians are the most likely to use the internet to manage their finances, with four out of 10 Swedes and Finns banking online.

But not all internet banking operations are a success Datamonitor said.

Stampede

According to the report, over ambitious planning led to the recent failure of Zurich Bank's UK online arm and the earlier closures of First-e and Redsafe.

In each case, the companies did not set realistic targets for customer acquisition, expansion and costing.

And more online banking ventures are destined to fail unless their operators improve functionality, Datamonitor warned.

In terms of the number of accounts held, the stampede into internet banking has been led by the UK and Germany.

Highest figure

Last year, 10 million online money accounts were active in the UK.

This was the highest figure for any European country.

And by the end of 2003 the figure has been predicted to rise to 11.5 million.

In Germany, 8.6 million accounts are active at present and this is predicted to rise to 18.1 million by 2007.