Today is the 10th anniversary of mbanx starting direct banking. mbanx (a division of Bank of Montreal) was the first direct banking operation in the world, and followed closely by many, such as Wingspan (BancOne), and ING.
There has been a host of learning about what to do, and how to get the right pace of execution since then.
Some links:
Intuit joint marketing arrangment
Technorati tags: direct+banking, mbanx
Bankwatch 
I agree mbanx was the first direct bank division of a **major** bank, but before that there was Security First Network Bank (1995) and Netbank (1996). Both were initially direct operations of smaller banks.
This reminds me of the debate at the time. Those banks you mention, would not have had online banking, would they?