Girotel was a service for electronic banking for private individuals and companies, from the Dutch Postbank.
The service was started in 1986, with a program that the customer could install on his PC. This version could be used until mid-2008. The Postbank was the first bank in the Netherlands that made payments via a computer possible. The payments had to be made offline before the Girotel system was connected by telephone; the payments were then sent and the additions and debits as well as the balances were collected.
The security of the bookings was based, among other things, on a Girotel Identification Number (GIN) and a Transaction Acceptance Number (TAN). The application of TAN codes was continued at the successor of Girotel, namely My Postbank. No coding devices are required (so-called token).
In 1986 the first Girotel programs were offered via the viditel system, with teletext-like controls. Later there was an offline DOS program and a Windows version of the offline program.
In 1997 Girotel became possible via ISDN. In 1998, Postbank published a version for internet banking.
Partly due to the growing popularity of another Postbank Internet Banking service, Mijn Postbank, which had more functionalities for the current bookings (7 x 24 hours of access and the use of iDEAL for internet payments), Girotel became available via the Internet for private individuals. stopped by 1 October 2005 and later also by companies.
Girotel was stopped on June 27, 2008. There was no replacement program from the Postbank side to bank offline. There are a few commercial programs that could import exported data from Girotel offline and Mijnpostbank.nl in order to keep them and to make overviews.
The special thing about Girotel was that it also used the program that was used by the Postcheque and Girodienst (the PCGD, the forerunner of the Postbank, later ING) to carry out the name-number check. An entered name was compared with the name that was linked to the entered account number by means of the Russel Soundex method. With this, Girotel has been ahead of the current developments for decades (2017 Rabobank).
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