Which building society launched Homelink, an early home-banking service, in the United Kingdom in 1983?

Nottingham Building Society launched Homelink, an early home-banking service, in the United Kingdom in 1983.

Homelink was developed with the Bank of Scotland and the technology company Prestel. Customers used a television connected to a telephone line to access account information and carry out selected banking tasks from home.

The service was an important step toward online banking because it moved routine banking away from the branch. Its technology was far more limited than modern internet banking: users relied on a specialized videotex system, and the available functions were constrained by the communications network and participating institutions.

Homelink is sometimes confused with later internet-banking launches. It did not use the World Wide Web, which became publicly available later in the 1990s. Its significance is that it demonstrated remote electronic banking before web browsers and smartphones became everyday tools.