Understanding Consumers Perception for Mobile Banking: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Mobile banking is a symbiosis of technology and financial services and is the most recent area of development in the banking sector. Little is known about consumers' attitudes towards the understanding of mobile banking channels. Although Internet Banking is available to the consumers living in urban areas, but it is not pretty available to the consumers residing in semi-urban and rural areas. As a result, in the era of Internet age, most of the banks in India are today making considerable investments to take advantage of the new business possibilities offered by wireless technologies. India is witnessing a new dawn of banking with mobile phone. From a rickshaw puller, a florist, a pan shop vendor to a truck driver, cash transactions are going mobile for all. Because the mobile phone culture is growing and has penetrated the urban and semi-urban population in India. And it is expected that it will replace the debit/credit card system in future. The number of mobile users is estimated to have far surpassed the number of Internet users. In the same order, mobile banking is getting wider acceptance. Mobile technology are emerging and rapidly developing in all areas of financial intermediation and financial markets i.e. mbanking, m-payment, m-commerce etc. Mobile phones offer a communications channel for initiating and executing on-line financial transactions. This channel may reduce the cost of financial transactions for provider and customer. In the same time, it will allow new entrants to the financial sectors and new relationships to be formed for distributing services. These changes hold the prospect of accelerating access to financial services on the back of the mobile infrastructure. For customers, mobile banking presents a delicate balance between a conceptually powerful opportunity i.e. being able to transact any time, anywhere and practical challenges i.e. small screen with menu optons and tiny buttons. This paper tries to find out the understanding the use of mobile banking by consumers. Further the paper also tries to identify the key factors that determine the adoption of mobile banking by customers.