Security First Network Bank (SFNB) was the first pure Internet bank in the United States. It had no physical branch bank offices and could only be accessed online. It was founded in Pineville,

Kentucky Kentucky (, ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the ...

, in October 1995 by Michael Karlin and James (Chip) S. Mahan III. Several months later, the bank relocated to

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...

, Georgia. It was initially established as a

savings bank A savings bank is a financial institution that is not run on a profit-maximizing basis, and whose original or primary purpose is collecting deposits on savings accounts that are invested on a low-risk basis and receive interest. Savings banks ha ...

along with a wholly owned software company (Security First Technologies). Eventually teller services were added in Atlanta. On September 30, 1998,

Royal Bank of Canada Royal Bank of Canada (RBC; ) is a Canadian multinational Financial institution, financial services company and the Big Five (banks), largest bank in Canada by market capitalization. The bank serves over 20 million clients and has more than ...

(RBC) acquired the banking portion of the Security First Network Bank, RBC Centura Banks, Inc, SEC Form 10-K, December, 2002
/ref> while the software development company was spun off as S1 Corporation. RBC subsequently acquired Centura Bank of North Carolina, rebranded the online banking segment as RBC Centura, and made several adjustments to customer terms of service at that time. Before Security First, some banks had experimented with a variety of schemes for providing online banking. Usually this involved some kind of token that was placed in an account that could only be used on the Internet. The tokens were not protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Security First allowed direct access to accounts, bill payment and the viewing of check images, all of which are commonplace today.

References

External links

S1
- as Security First Technologies is now titled.

* http://www.thefreelibrary.com/America's+First+Bank+on+the+Internet,+Security+First+Network+Bank,...-a017645199 {{US-bank-stub Online banks