Setting up your NAB Internet Banking

New to NAB Internet Banking? There can be a lot to learn, but once you’ve spent a few minutes getting yourself set up you’ll find banking online easy to do.

Update, December 2011: After we gave NAB Internet Banking a new look, we also updated this post to match.

The first step is to register for NAB Internet Banking.

When you login for the first time you’ll see your Account summary, which lists your NAB accounts and their balances. If you scroll down you’ll see a section called Customise the way you bank. We’re going to go through the five customisation options so you can get your online banking working exactly how you want it to.

Get regular emails or SMSs about your accounts

How about we text you your account balance just before lunch on pay day, so you know that your card’s not going to be declined at the café? Or why don’t we email you a couple of days before your credit card payment is due?

Whatever NAB Alerts you set up, they won’t cost you a thing. You can choose email or SMS alerts, and decide how often you get them. Click Start setup to decide when you want to hear from us.

Let yourself pay anyone

You can already transfer money between your own accounts and pay bills through BPAY®, but one of the most useful things you can do online is transfer money directly to other people and accounts (in Australia and overseas).

Before you can do this, though, you need what we call “pay anyone access”. By setting this up you’re telling us that you want to be able to move money out of your own accounts online.

Make your mobile phone an extra line of security

You’ve already chosen a password that protects your NAB  Internet Banking, but there’s an easy way to be even safer. So long as you have a mobile phone (or a landline that can receive SMS), SMS Security adds an extra layer of defence without costing you anything.

SMS Security helps us make sure that you’re the one using NAB Internet Banking to make payments or change your personal details: all we do is text you a short code which you have to enter before you can continue.

Even if a fraudster knows your password they can’t empty your accounts without the SMS code. And if someone’s trying to get to your money the unexpected SMS that you receive will be an early tip-off.

If we already have a mobile phone number for you, you can register yourself online. If we don’t have your number yet, you’ll need to give us a call.

Stop your paper statements

How do you treat your bank statements? Do you send them straight to the bin, or do you have an ever-growing pile of mail that you keep meaning to file away somewhere?

In Internet Banking you can see any statements that we’ve sent you in the last seven years. You can’t lose them, and they’ll always be in order. All you have to do is open the Account info menu and select Statements. (If you’re doing that while you read this, remember that new accounts probably won’t have any statements yet.)

Your online statements look exactly like the paper ones that you get in the mail. You can use them as legal documents and print them when you need to. So the question is whether you still want us to mail paper statements to you.

Stopping paper statements is an environmentally-friendly way to simplify your life. It also increases the number of transactions that you can see in your account’s Transaction history. (Usually we list the last 100 days’ transactions. If you stop paper statements we increase that to 560 days, or over one-and-a-half years).

Got a joint account? You both need to stop statements
If you have a joint account we’ll keep sending paper statements until you’ve both stopped paper statements.

Make your accounts easy to recognise with nicknames

Bank account numbers make sense to machines, not people. Instead, you think of your accounts as things like “Spending money” and “Holiday savings”.

Your Account summary lists accounts by their numbers, which makes it hard to tell them apart. The first thing to do is nickname your accounts. Under Personalise your account, click Start setup.

In the Internet Banking settings screen you can type in any name you like for each account. You’re the only one who’ll see the names that you use.

After you’ve nicknamed your accounts your Account summary will list them in alphabetical order. If you want your accounts to appear in a certain order, put a number before each nickname (eg. “1. Spending money”).

Now that you’re set up, keep learning!

That’s the end of setting up your NAB Internet Banking. Now you’re ready to learn about the basics of NAB Internet Banking.

Do you have any questions, or tricks to share?

The first time you bank online can be a bit difficult. If there’s something else that you wish you’d known when you first logged in, or if you’re a beginner with a question about NAB Internet Banking, let us know with a comment.

We’ll include the best suggestions and answer your questions, in upcoming blog posts.