The Bank of Israel is allowing transfers of money from one account to another over the Internet for the first time. All the remaining prohibitions in the field of virtual banking have thereby been removed.
Supervisor of Banks Dr. Yitzhak Tal has just sent a letter to Bank Hapoalim and the General Investec bank, advising his willingness to allow inter-account transfers via the Internet, under certain conditions. To date, bank customers were allowed to receive information about their accounts and make transactions within their own accounts via the Internet, but were prevented from transferring money from one account to another in this way.
The letter was addressed to Bank Hapoalim and the General Investec bank since they had requested Tal's permission to allow transferals to a third party via the Internet. At the same time, the permit was granted in principle, and relates to all the banks.
According to the permit Tal granted, accounts to which money can be transferred via the Internet will be divided into two categories: pre-defined accounts and other accounts. For pre-defined accounts, customers will define the beneficiaries to whom they transfer money on a regular basis. According to Supervisor of Banks regulations, they will be permitted to transfer money to the beneficiary accounts without restriction.
As for the other accounts, limitations have been set on the amounts. A ceiling of NIS 12,000 was set for transfers to enterprise accounts, and NIS 6,000 for accounts belonging to individuals.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on 27 March, 2000