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In fact, market uncertainties and stock market instability are some of the main arguments used by the online financial entities to widen their range of products to the extent that they are now increasingly resembling traditional banks.

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The so-called marketing mix is fast becoming one of the latest online banking phenomena, offering a combination of products, channels and clients. Faced with the financial supermarket trend, financial companies that operate over the Internet (either as an alternative channel or as the only business branch) already own the technology to be able to offer the products and services that the client demands.

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The online Spanish banks (Patagon, ING Direct, Bancopopular-e, Inversis, Uno-e and Actibobank) compete on the web with other entitities offering specific services for individuals and companies: these are SCH, BBVA Net Office, BBVA Net Cash, eBankinter, Banc Sabadell,� Caixa Catalunya, Deutsche Bank, BBK, Banco Atl�ntico, Caixa Galicia, La Caixa and Caja Madrid.

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The potential of the online banking sector is clear for all to see. A study carried out by the consulting company Forrester predicts that, in three years, online banking will have 110 million users the world over. Currently 42 million Europeans (some 14% of the adult population) uses online banking services. In Spain, however, the growth of this phenomenon has been less spectacular than in other countries of the Old Continent. Up to now, online banking clients reach some 30% of web users. Still, the number of online banking users will rise from the current 2.3 million to9.1 million by 2005, according to various experts. In this sense, it is worth recalling the number of setbacks suffered by Internet banking in Spain, which has several times needed to reinvent the concept of the virtual branch to create a truly digital alternative to the traditional bank.

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Business consultants are certain that the Spanish financial market needs companies that have at least three different operating channels: the Internet, a call centre and a small branch. In other words, Internet-only companies appear to have abandoned the idea of offering online services only and prefer to go for a more secure system that consists of using the Net as an additional means of offering their services among a number of alternatives. Online banks prefer use the telephone and the ATMs in addition to the Internet. Some, in fact, are even considering the possibility of opening branches to establish direct contact with the client.