I am seeking a list of banks located in either Germany, Austria,
Switzerland or Netherland with Germany being the primary focus. These
banks need to meet specific citeria:

i) the account must be available for foreign companies not
incorporated in Germany

ii) the account must be accessible via Internet (presumably web), with
ability to view incoming payments (and information about them) and to
issue transactions

iii) the bank system must be able to send email notification about an
incoming payment. The format of the message must be either
user-configurable, or must include all information about the payment,
including the number of originating account. If this is not posible,
the bank must allow for another way to automatically check if payments
were received, for example via secure HTTPS request

The third criteria is important, we need to be able to automatically
track if a payment was received. We will program our side inhouse and
match whatever the bank has available. Security (as in case of the
email message) is not a primary issue as the worst thing that can
happen is somebody monitoring our account balance (i.e. you have no
ability to issue something via this channel). The security of the
system in criteria no. 2 should be reasonable.

This is not a request for credit card processing system. We wish to
automatically monitor wire transactions. German knowledge may be
needed (but it's up you). If the detailed information is not provided
on the web, an email contact would probably be needed. I need a list
of banks which are certain to meet these criterias. Please try to
provide a list which includes at least one bank in each of the named
countries (a bank with subsidaries in some/all preferable).

Dear netm-ga,
I was able to find a directory listing major online banks in Europe. 

Europe Online Banking Directory
http://www.0-effort-online-banking.com/Countries/europe.htm

I copied and pasted below the list of banks of the four countries you
mentioned. I was not able to find out though if any of these offer the
services or features you indicated, since I can’t read any of these
sites’ native language. They have inquiry emails, though, so I hope
you can make do with that. I also hope they are few enough for you to
be able to sift through.

German Banks:
Bank24
Citibank
Consors
Deutsche Bank
Direkt Anlage Bank
Dresdner Bank Investment Group
Hypo-Bank
National Bank
Landesbank Baden-Württemberg
Westdeutsche Landesbank

Austrian Banks:
Bank Austria
Hypo Landesbank
P.S.K. Telebanking
Raiffeisen Bankengruppe Vorarlberg
Raiffeisen Banking Group
Raiffeisen Zentralbank Austria

Dutch Banks :
ING Bank International
Postbank

Swiss Online banks:
Bank von Ernst
BEKB net
Credit Suisse
Pacific International Bank
Union Bank of Switzerland
Zürcher Kantonalbank

Here are some online lists in case you want other sources.

List of German banks from Finance-World
http://www.sbs-agro.ru/europe/germany/banks/
Please take note of “Internet Banking” after some names. 

List of Austrian banks from Finance-World
http://www.sbs-agro.ru/europe/austria/banks.htm

Banking Yellow Pages 
http://www.qualisteam.com/cgi-bin/banks/byp.cgi?db=orgabase&uid=default

Top 100 German Bank list as of Oct 2002
http://www.german-banks.com/html/10_news/List100-table.asp

List of banks in the Netherlands 
http://www.bizeurope.com/bsr/country/nl.htm

FMLX Internet Banking Directory
http://www.fmlx.com/Banks_and_Banking/Internet_Banking/index.shtml

Search strategy: Names like europe, germany, german, netherlands,
dutch, switzerland and austria mixed with ‘online banking’, ‘internet
bank’

Hope this helped in a way. 

techtor-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by netm-ga on 18 Oct 2002 11:08 PDT

I have made my best effort extracting the information needed from your
answer, but failed.  The list of banks doing netbanking is just a
start.

I really need (as I stressed in my question) the information how I can
receive a confirmation about incoming payment with the complete
information about the payment.

I tried contacting the banks peronally before, with little success -
and that's why I turned to Google. The list of banks will help me
little here.

If such information is not available, you should not answer the
question.

Please try to point out banks which meet the 3 criterias I set.

---

Clarification of Answer by techtor-ga on 19 Oct 2002 03:08 PDT

I'll see what I can pull up. If you don't get an answer, you can ask for a refund.

---

Clarification of Answer by techtor-ga on 21 Oct 2002 22:53 PDT

Hello netm,
I found http://www.swissinvestmentbank.net . This might suit your
needs. I'll look for more. I used 'offshore germany internet banking'
in Google.

techtor

---

Clarification of Answer by techtor-ga on 28 Oct 2002 07:09 PST

Dear Netm,
I wonder if you’re looking for online offshore accounts. Is that the
purpose for your looking for a bank based in Germany?
Also, the link I gave previously, www.swissinvestmentbank.net, seems
to contradict with the comment I gave earlier about Swiss banks. I
apologize again for this, though I think the discrepancy is because
this recent link may not actually give what you need.
I had emailed a couple of German banks about their online services.
They haven’t replied yet, so while waiting, let me give you some
current findings.

Deutsche Bank Offshore has a new service called Presto On-line, which
may have the services you indicated. This bank has offices in the
Netherlands and Switzerland, but I suspect you can avail of this
service in Deutsche banks in Germany.
Deutsche Bank Offshore services, including e-banking.
http://www.dboffshore.com

Meanwhile, here are some other resources you might want to sift
through:

List of German Banks from Squirrel Your Nuts Offshore.com (not all are
online, though)
http://www.squirrelyournutsoffshore.com/banks-germany-german.htm

Information on Swiss Internet Bank account
http://www.offshore-manual.com/SwissInternet.html

Comprehensive bank list 
http://www.internationalparliament.org/italiano/Cons/Banche/Germany.htm

DAB Bank AG is one of the banks that I emailed, though there is no
reply yet.
From first-E website - DAB bank AG chosen by Banque d'Escompte to be
new home for first-e the internet bank customers
http://www.first-e.com/uk/media/index.php3

Search strategy:
German(y) offshore internet bank(ing)
German(y) offshore online bank(ing)

I hope these snippets provide what you need. I’ll keep looking.

Techtor

---

Request for Answer Clarification by netm-ga on 28 Oct 2002 19:14 PST

Techtor,

thanks for the effort you put into this. I will try to be very
specific this time (even more), in order to eliminate any uncertainity
as of what I am looking for:

* I am looking for a German bank, because our target customers are in
Germany and we want to minimize the expences / time involved in wire
transfer from our clients accounts to ours

* what I want to solve mostly (criteria #3 in my question) is the
automated computerized communication with the bank account. We need a
way to make our system automatically receive the information about
incoming payments, with enough information to safely determine which
payment was just received. The idea was to do this through a HTTPS
feed or email notification, but it can be any form you can find, as
long as we can automate this from our server. Somebody mentioned SWIFT
messages in the comments - I do not have much idea what those are, but
if it can help us, I'm in for it.

In the end, this should all form an alternative payment system,
bypassing the need for credit-card acceptance (for several reasons).

The question revolves all around establishing the link between our
server and the bank. The offshore accounts you presented are not
really the type of service we are looking for (or better said: the
information I am looking for is nowhere discussed in these products).

---

Clarification of Answer by techtor-ga on 29 Oct 2002 19:33 PST

Hello again netm,

Your needs sure are specific. So specific that I agree now with sam78
below, that the information you seek may not be readily available on
the net. What I have given were the best results based on Net
searches, so the next step would be to email or call individual banks
and inquire. On another note, so far no Google Researcher from Germany
(if there is any) has happened upon your question and dared an answer,
so let’s hope one such researcher sees our little exchange. But for
now, I do concede having bombed on this one.

By the way, since sam78 mentioned SWIFT, let me share with you my
findings regarding it, though it may be irrelevant:

“SWIFT is the industry-owned cooperative supplying secure messaging
services and interface software to 7,000 financial institutions in 197
countries. SWIFT carried over 1.5 billion messages in 2001. The
average daily value of payment messages on SWIFT is estimated to be
above USD 6 trillion.

“SWIFT provides messaging services to banks, broker/dealers and
investment managers, as well as to market infrastructures in payments,
treasury, securities and trade. These services help customers reduce
costs, improve automation and manage risk.”

http://www.swift.com

www.financial-directory information about swift
http://www.finanz-adressen.de/swift/swift.html

I have no response from banks yet that I emailed. Meanwhile, you can
repost your question or ask for a refund. Thanks for the chance to
tackle your question.

Techtor

While I aprecieate the work done on this question, the answer was
clearly unable to meet the 3 criteria outlined in the question.
Further, it unfortunately did not help me move any closer to the
solution. I tried to stress very clearly that the 3rd criteria was
cruicial. I also made apparent that there might not be a clear answer
on the web and one might have to use email and/or knowledge of German.
In case this is impossible, the question should have remained
unanswered.

It is most unlikely you'll be able to find this information online.
The level of service you describe will be limited to business
customers, in the past I've found detail at this level is only likely
to be given out my contacting the bank direct as a prospective
customer. Email is unlikely to be the form of communication - the
favoured medium by banks is going to be automated SWIFT msgs.

Given the now euro-zone I don't see why it has to be German, the
currency through out the block so French, Italian and Spanish banks
would offer similiar services. UK banks also offer euro accounts which
probably comply with your demands.

I don't think you'll get the answer you want here unless one of the
paid researches is an expert in the euro-zone banking world (and I'm
unwilling to do the research as I can't get paid).

sam78 - thanks for the info. But I wouldn't ask for the information if
I didn't consider it possible. In fact, I personally, my company and
many of my friends are clients of such a bank in Czech Republic. They
do send email notifications and they meet all the criterias I set. If
it is possible here, it should be possible in the "more developed"
parts of the world, too.

The SWIFT messages could be an option - in such a case, I need info on
how to receive the SWIFT messages automatically by some server
software.

Hello netm,
I see I missed your comment about your having an account in the Czech
Republic. I see that country's banks can service foreign clients. It
may turn out that the other countries' Internet banks might not
service other clients. I found out that Swiss banks in general do not
service clients from the USA, UK, Canada and Japan. They are urged to
open a Classic Swiss bank account.

http://switzerland.isyours.com/e/banking/accounts/swiss-Internet-banking-account.html

I will look for more info to make sure about the other countries. If
you do not feel I may supply the right answer, feel free to repost the
question.

Apologies for the inadequate initial answer.

techtor