The first bank to receive approval, at the beginning of December, was the First International Bank, which already provides services under the name "First International On-Line". Any long-standing customer of the bank can obtain - free of charge for a six month trial period - specific information about his accounts, securities, saving schemes, mortgages, and more. A First International virtual customer also has an advantage: he can exploit special bargains for surfers not offered in the ordinary branches.
Results are already available. According the data provided by First International Bank, in recent weeks the daily rate of entries to the virtual branch has stabilised at hundreds of enquiries a day, most of them people who have just joined up to the service, who have already managed to make use of it.
First International Bank’s relative maturity in the field is due to a long period of preparation since the beginning of 1997.
To ensure that the level of information security meets the standards set by the Supervisor of Banks, and furthermore, is capable of withstanding break-in attempts from the world at large, Mataf hired consultant services from Canadian company Mtech, which employs professional hackers - experts at breaking in to computer systems -who try, without knowing the customer, to break into his system to reveal loopholes and make recommendations as to how to close them.