Availability and Systems integration
One of the basic requirements of e-banking services is their 24-hour availability. This
often requires e-banking applications’ integration with legacy systems, which were
designed to provide services during only specified periods, often with suspension
of services at other times for various reasons such as data backups and end-of-day
processing (Mohamed & Al-Jaroodi, 2003). Usual legacy systems are accounting,
banking, payroll, customer information, product management (such as current accounts or savings accounts), and inventory systems. The new business applications
are often not built from scratch and they normally rely on the functionality of the
existing legacy applications.
Incompatibility between e-banking applications and legacy systems means that
most banks require middleware to integrate these systems, which can be expensive
and may bring its own set of problems. Systems integration has been and is still, to
some extent, a key barrier in e-banking. As pointed out in (Shah et al, 2007; Shah &
Siddiqui, 2006), shortcomings in technological infrastructure are often the biggest
hurdle in the implementation of e-business channels and their integration with other
parts of a business. This type of integration is essential for the success of e-banking,
as an electronic request for a typical financial transaction passes through a number
of different systems before an action is complete.