 One of the first fully functional direct banks in the United States was the Security First Network Bank (SFNB), which was launched in October 1995, and was the first direct bank to be insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.Though SFNB did not make much profit in its initial years, it demonstrated that the concept of direct banking could work.Some direct banks focused only on online savings accounts, providing higher interest rates than traditional banks for customers who were happy to only have access to their account on the internet.