These services are also provided through alternative channels such as the internet and telephone banking.

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The thinking behind the move is that high-spending card-holders are ideal targets for telephone banking.

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First Direct is the company that brought us telephone banking in 1989.

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"Bank cards were being swallowed by bank machines, and there were problems with the online and telephone banking systems, " she said.

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I've used the telephone banking, the internet banking with them.

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Telephone banking won't make it impossible for the government to steal dollars (as Mexico did in 1982 and Argentina in 2002, by confiscating bank deposits), but it ought to make such theft politically more difficult.

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What banks do, like any business, is they look at the areas in which increased use is occurring, like internet banking, telephone banking and so on and they may choose to make their investment there.

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And Bank of Scotland, the loser in that auction, is expanding in Europe, having launched successful telephone mortgage-banking operations in Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands.

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The slower Bacs payment system - which underlies telephone and internet banking services - has also failed to show any trend of savers shifting their money.

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Offshore banking by telephone, for example, leaves less of a paper trail for the authorities.

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The bug infests most elements of everyday life: electricity, gas and water supplies, telephone services, the banking system, health services, transport and industry are all at risk if it is not caught in time.

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It has been estimated that a banking transaction over the telephone costs half as much as the same transaction conducted over a counter in a traditional branch, and that an ATM transaction costs a quarter as much.

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Above all technology, through the Internet, the cash-machine or even the humble telephone, is offering simpler and cheaper ways for customers to do their banking.

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You can use online banking, a standing order, or arrange a date of payment with your telephone bank service.

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