Customers of Home Federal Savings & Loan...

Customers of Home Federal Savings & Loan Assn.’s 14 Orange County branches will be able to bank at home through their personal computer or specially equipped television sets beginning early next year, thanks to an agreement made with Gateway Videotex of Santa Ana and VideoFinancial Services of Dallas.

Thomas C. Byrne, vice president and product development manager for Home Federal, said that Home Federal customers will be able to inquire about their various loan and deposit account balances, transfer funds from one account to another, display their statements, pay monthly bills, order checks or make stop payment requests from their homes.

The system will operate on AT&T; Sceptre terminals or with special software on IBM and compatible computers, the PC Jr., the Commodore 64 and 128 models and the Apple PC line. Byrne said that about five percent of Home Federal’s 60,000 Orange County customers currently have compatible television sets or computers.

“Initially, we are going to try this out in Orange County,” Byrne said, describing home banking as a more personalized and more convenient financial delivery system. “Depending on the results, we will decide how far we want to take it from there.”

Home Federal has $9.5 billion in assets and 158 branches in California--two-thirds of which are located in the Southland. In addition, it is one of the first major savings and loans to operate a video banking system.

Byrne said there has been no decision on how much to charge for the service. He said that Gateway currently charges its customers $3 an hour for the use of its system.

VideoFinancial Services was formed in 1983 by a consortium of seven major banks to provide remote banking services on videotex networks. It currently delivers such services on CompuServe and Knight-Ridder’s Viewtron system as well as on Gateway, an affiliate of Times Mirror Videotex Services.