Internet Banking developed due to increasing demand of online banking transactions. The biggest advantages of Internet Banking consist of complex banking solutions, 24 hours availability, quick and secure access to the back-end application through Internet. These advantages are due to the use of SOA (service-oriented architecture). SOA appeared as a necessity of companies to integrate big and independent portions of applications, in order to obtain an homogeneous functionality of the system. For the Internet Banking applications, SOA proved to be the optimal architectural solution, for a smoth integration between banking services from the front-end to the back-end.This paper intend to offer an insite analyse of the Internet Banking applications architecture integrated with other banking systems. A SOA oriented analyse will establish the scope of the integration architecture.Internet Banking, SOA, architecture, front-end, back-end, Banking Systems

Catalin Ionut SILVESTRU

Constantin Marian MATEI

Dragos Stefan SILVESTRU

English

Research Papers in Economics

Revista Informatica Economică nr. 2(46)/2008    55
Internet Banking Integration within the Banking System  
 
Constantin Marian MATEI, Cătălin Ionuţ SILVESTRU 
Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest 
Dragoş Ştefan SILVESTRU 
    3D Media Creation, Bucharest 
 
Internet Banking developed due to increasing demand of online banking transactions. 
The biggest advantages of Internet Banking consist of complex banking solutions, 24 hours 
availability, quick and secure access to the back-end application  through Internet. These ad-
vantages are due to the use of SOA (service-oriented architecture). SOA appeared as a neces-
sity of companies to integrate big and independent portions of applications, in order to obtain 
an homogeneous functionality of the system. For the Internet Banking applications, SOA 
proved to be the optimal architectural solution, for a smoth integration between banking ser-
vices from the front-end to the back-end. 
This paper intend to offer an insite analyse of the Internet Banking applications architecture 
integrated with other banking systems. A SOA oriented analyse will establish the scope of the 
integration architecture. 
Keywords: Internet Banking, SOA, architecture, front-end, back-end, Banking Systems. 
 
nternet has changed very much the rules 
of the game in the past years (Gunaseka-
ran and Love, 1999). The banking area of the 
economic sector was impacted by those 
changes as well. Customers requests for 
quick access and no matter the location at 
their bank accounts, or at financial/banking 
transactions, all of these have determined the 
banking institutions world wide to adopt the 
Internet as the optimal solution for the pre-
sented demands. Through the Internet net-
work banks are able to connect front-end 
(front-office) applications with back-end 
(back-office) (Aladwani, 2001). Based on 
such advantages, Internet Banking applica-
tions were created. 
The evolution of bank presence on Web from 
simple, static applications, to complex, dy-
namic applications with numerous transac-
tions, is presented bellow: 
  
Static Web site with general 
information about the bank itself 
Interractional offline transactions 
having a mail based client 
Internet Banking services. 
Online transactions 
Time 
Access type 
 
Fig.1. Bank evolution on Web 
Source: Tuchila (2000) 
 
Until 2000, Internet Banking applications 
could have been accessed mostly in the Unit-
ed States of America, or in European coun-
tries such as: United Kingdom, Spain, Italy 
and France (Tuchila, 2000). Since 2000, on-
line banking applications are commercialized 
or created in Romania, for example: Empori-
ki Bank launched its Internet Banking service 
in December 2000 (Valentina Tudor, 2004, 
BRD-NET from BRD, raiffeisenonline from 
Raiffeisen Bank, Alpha Click from Alpha 
Bank, ING Home Bank from ING.  
I Revista Informatica Economică nr. 2(46)/2008 
 
56
The advantages of Internet Banking applica-
tions consist of: quickness; secured access to 
sensitive data as accounts, personal data of 
customers, transactions; account manage-
ment; operating sale-purchase transactions in 
real time and at long distance; suppressing 
the stress of staying in bank for a transaction; 
low costs for the maintenance of this kind of 
applications. 
Internet determined also the appearance of 
firsts service-oriented architectures (SOA). 
This architecture can be used to interact on 
Internet or from an workstation to another 
(using point-to-point protocols for data trans-
fer – EDI, electronic data interchange). SOA 
is basically built from software services. 
These services are independent one from 
each other and they run protected on the 
working platforms (application servers): 
.NET or Java. These have the ability to man-
age the memory, to create the synchronous or 
asynchronous links between different com-
ponents and to create the data mapping. The 
architecture is presenting itself as a summary 
of services: 
 
Fig.2. SOA model 
Source: The Linthicum Group (2007) 
 
SOA architectures helped banks by offering 
them the possibility to connect different ap-
plications or to integrate big portions of 
software code in ad hoc applications. This is 
one of the reasons why SOA became a key 
element in Internet Banking applications.  
Although there is an increasing interest for 
Internet Banking usability, there are few case 
studies referring the solutions which banks 
are using to create Internet Banking applica-
tions.  
Another point of view of the theme of this 
paper is based on the fact that Internet Bank-
ing represents an interface of banking opera-
tions directly with the customers, which is in-
tegrated with the back-end system of the Revista Informatica Economică nr. 2(46)/2008    57
bank. Case studies about architectures able to 
sustain an integrated application system are 
few in the specialty reviews. Banks encoun-
tered many problems in their attempt to be 
compatible with SOA, with this architecture 
requests (Symantec.com, 2005). By the small 
number of interfaces between different com-
ponents provided by this type of architecture, 
companies can optimize the flows between 
their systems. The optimization is done 
through a special link system-to-system 
which doesn’t necessitate repetitive files 
download (in physical format), nor effective 
software development (requires specific pa-
rametric to be done by the architect himself). 
This is the context by which Internet Banking 
applications represent the front-end part 
which has to be integrated with a back-end 
part; the purpose of this being a integrated 
solution for the banking institution. 
By the Internet and Intranet development, the 
banking market faced a healthy growth. Cus-
tomer’s demands influenced the ascension. In 
this way more distribution channels for bank-
ing services appeared: 
 
Fig.3. Customer structure evolution knowing the distribution channels  
of banking services (%), Source: Mocanu and Filip (2001) 
 
Another point which must be taken into ac-
count when building an Internet Banking ap-
plication is the cost. Based on the complexity 
of the applications developed, costs are 
placed in intervals such they are presented in 
Figure 4. 
 
Fig.4. Costs and Web application for Internet Banking complexity relation 
Source: Gartner Group, quoted in Tuchila (2000) 
15  10  Direct 
banking 
Subsidiare 
Internet Ban-
king 
Canale multiple: 
- Subsidiare 
- Internet 
- Telefonie 
Telefonie (phone 
banking) 
Subsidiare 
85 
65 
10 
15 
2005 1998 Revista Informatica Economică nr. 2(46)/2008 
 
58
Internet banking application is like a black-
box. Ideally, the communication with the 
back-end will be asynchronous. The reason 
for this type of communication is that the 
system will be able to run as a whole 24 
hours out of 24. The Web application will 
run continuously, even if the back-end be-
comes unavailable. Of course, this is bidirec-
tional, meaning when the Web is not availa-
ble, the back-end will continue working (spe-
cific processes of the back-end application 
will run no matter the front-end is active or 
not). Also, the back-end sees the front-end as 
a number of services with big granularities. 
In this way a bigger generality is assured for 
the integration solution. This is the standard 
that SOA proposes to different businesses 
(Figure 5). 
The back-end connector and the back-end 
message queue manager are components that 
assure the flow of messages in the system. 
They don’t need the creation of new interfac-
es, because it already contains the necessary 
classes and objects necessary for the connec-
tion. IBM Websphere Message Queue Man-
ager or JMS standard (Java Message Service) 
for Java application servers. 
Services (web or beans, based on the applica-
tion server– Websphere or .NET) are 
grouped in a Business Service layer (IBM). 
Services are meant to take messages from the 
queue, or to bring messages in the queue. 
Moreover, their role is to map the data in the 
queue according to the core business that will 
receive the data.  
The message queue has a Message Broker 
that manages the message flow. Therefore, if 
the back-end is not functional, the message 
broker will retain the messages in the queue 
until the system is operational. The broker is 
comprised by the Business Services Gover-
nance component and is available within the 
IBM Websphere Message Queue Manager 
software component. 
 
Internet 
Banking 
Application 
Back-end 
Connector 
Put/Get 
messages 
Back-end message 
queue manager 
Business Services 
Business Services 
Governance
Bank core-
application 
Database 
communicates 
Application server 
Put/Get 
messages 
manages 
monitors 
Uses/ calls 
Store data 
 
Fig.5. Integration of an Internet Banking application with a back-end Revista Informatica Economică nr. 2(46)/2008    59
Along with the development of the Internet, 
banks needed to adapt their informatics sys-
tems in order to answer to customers’ de-
mands in an efficient manner. Therefore, 
there were several services oriented architec-
tures implemented, that could integrate exist-
ing back-end applications completed by 
front-end applications, new from the building 
technology point of view. 
A key element of front office applications is 
Internet Banking, because it allows remote 
access, it is secured, flexible, permits online 
transactions, in  real time, as if operations 
were teller ones, without suffering from 
stress of queues.  
Due to high costs of complex informatics 
systems, big companies and banks have 
started using SOA architectures (service-
oriented architecture). SOA offers banks the 
possibility of connecting older applications to 
new ones, including the integration of Inter-
net Banking in the current customized sys-
tem. 
SOA can be used for a wide range of operat-
ing systems, application servers and data 
bases, according to budget and performance 
limitations of the beneficiary (from open-
source Linux/JBoss/MySql configurations to 
systems available on clusters 
(UNIX/Websphere/DB2). 
 
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Internet Banking integration within the banking system

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