Barclays increased the jockeying with rivals for internet customers yesterday, announcing a £325m budget this year for new projects and a pledge to keep making profits despite increased investment.

Barclays, which refuses to follow some of its rivals by setting up a separately-branded bank for the internet, published a nine-page list of all its e-commerce initiatives across retail, overseas, Barclaycard, fund management and business banking operations.

The bank, which claims to be the country's biggest on the internet with 1m customers, tried to demonstrate the diversity of its cyberspace clientele by citing the example of a 99-year-old who registered for the online bank last month.

David Weymouth, chief information officer, said that while Barclays was spending £325m on the internet - which helped it squeeze 4% of costs out of its retail bank last year- it would also spend £100m on revamping its branch network, the source of much of its negative publicity in recent months.

"From the customer side we're convinced that the right strategy is to deliver to as many customers as possible a broad range of services across multiple channels."

While the bank insists it will not prevent internet customers using branches or telephone banking, it will launch an internet-only savings account later in the year.

Of the £325m to be spent this year on the net, £180m will be devoted to core infrastructure, £75m to "business to customer" initiatives and £70m for "business to business".

The bank's shares rose by 29p to £16.51 even though analysts expressed some scepticism that the benefits of the spending would feed through to the bank's profits.