Banking over the Internet has attracted increasing attention over the past several years from bankers and other financial services industry participants, the business press, regulators, and lawmakers, both in the United States and in other countries. In part, this is due to the rapid and...

As the world-wide financial crisis of 2008 morphs into what many suspect will be a deep and sustained global recession, pundits and policymakers lament the excesses that resulted in the systemically significant overleveraging of the household sector. Not long ago, many of the same people whose...