Perhaps on Internet yes, but you should also look up Minitel, the 1980s French interactive directory service that, among many other services, provided online banking from home. I think it mostly relied on physical (i.e. closed network) security as opposed to any cryptography.

In the 1990s, French banks apparently considered providing online banking on the open and public Internet as much riskier than on the closed and proven Minitel (and probably quite rightly so).