M-banking barriers in Pakistan: a customer perspective of adoption and continuity intention
| Date | 04 February 2019 |
| Published date | 04 February 2019 |
| Pages | 58-84 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/DTA-04-2018-0022 |
| Author | Abdul Waheed Siyal,Donghong Ding,Saeed Siyal |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,Library technology,Information behaviour & retrieval,Metadata,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
M-banking barriers in Pakistan:
a customer perspective of
adoption and continuity intention
Abdul Waheed Siyal and Donghong Ding
School of Management,
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China, and
Saeed Siyal
School of Public Affairs,
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to determine barriers jeopardizing the adoption and usage intention
of mobile banking (M-banking) in Pakistan and provide deeper insights to fix such deteriorating factors.
Design/methodology/approach –Data was collected in countrywide regional headquarters to mark the
utmost generalizability of the results, which included seven largest cities of Pakistan. SEM path analysis was
used to analyze data collected from Pakistan’s top 5 bank customers incorporating both users and non-users.
Findings –Results revealed that lack of awareness, initial trust and compatibility and perceived risk were
the core barriers that stood out as obstacles to the adoption and usage of M-banking in Pakistan. It was also
approved that having fixed these core barriers would outcome in existing users’continuity intent besides
raising new users’inclination toward M-banking.
Originality/value –The study has unveiled the core barriers that have so far impeded the adoption and
usage of M-banking. There is not a unified position concerning adoption and usage blockades. Factors differ
with contexts, markets, time and kinds of innovations. However, this study is unlike past studies that merely
studied students within a specified institute in a restricted jurisdiction. This is the first study to have
nationally explored adoption and usage issues; thus, it is anticipated to potentially contribute to the prevailing
literature especially in Pakistani context where a few studies prevail, addressing M-banking adoption and
usage barriers.
Keywords Pakistan, Barriers, SEM, TAM, Awareness, M-banking
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Mobile banking (M-banking) has revolutionalised the overall banking industry, as most of
the banking transactions can easily be performed regardless of time and place, on ones’
fingertips without having to visit any bank branch (Oliveira et al., 2014; Mohammadi, 2015b;
Tran and Corner, 2016; Salimon et al., 2017), which has enabled consumers to attain desired
value-added banking services with a nominal and, sometimes, no cost, besides considerable
savings of time, money and efforts (Goyette et al., 2010; Hogan et al., 2004; Kim and
Prabhakar, 2004). M-banking in prevailing commerce plays a significant role in accelerating
growth (Kim and Prabhakar, 2004) and bringing banking value-added services to
consumers’doorsteps (Harrison-Walker, 2001; Hogan et al., 2004). M-banking is still in its
early evolutionary stage (Teo et al., 2012), hence mainly targeting trust of potential users to
ascertain long lasting and expanding usage, but despite such far-fetched gains and
incredible efforts, yet M-banking has not been able to reach experts’surmised levels (Mullan
et al., 2017; Hanafizadeh et al., 2014; Shaikh and Karjaluoto, 2015).
This calls for the further probe, compelling researchers and service providers to
step back and look into the barriers effecting M-banking adoption spread and resulting
of existing M-banking accounts into dormancy and deactivation, which is contrary
to Gartner’s predicted mass institutionalization of M-banking at latest in 2013
Data Technologies and
Applications
Vol. 53 No. 1, 2019
pp. 58-84
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2514-9288
DOI 10.1108/DTA-04-2018-0022
Received 2 April 2018
Revised 27 August 2018
17 October 2018
Accepted 31 October 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2514-9288.htm
58
DTA
53,1
(Gartner, 2008); the Juniper Research predictions of worldwide M-banking users
surpassing 1bn by 2017 ( Juniper Research, 2013), which forms simply 15 percent of global
cell phone users and leaving the giant part unbanked; and the marvelous rise touching
2bn users by 2021, foreseeing more than one in each three of mature population, accessing
M-banking services via their mobile devices ( Juniper Research, 2016), which is again a
huge prediction seemingly, lacking fortified outcomes besides contradicting numerous
extant studies ascertaining declined growth expectations of M-banking (Koksal, 2016;
Dineshwar and Steven, 2013; Shih et al., 2010; Cruz et al., 2009; Lee and Chung, 2009;
Luarn and Lin, 2005).
Some past studies of Laukkanen (2007), Laukkanen and Lauronen (2005), Laforet and Li
(2005), Kim et al. (2007), Bigne et al. (2005), Tanner (2008), Teo et al. (2012) and Moser (2015)
reveal that only a meager percentage of the youngster population among developed or
developing countries has so far shown their inclination toward the adoption of M-banking,
which typically consents that higher the change is involved in the innovation, greater is the
confrontation shown by users (Laukkanen et al., 2007). However, it is natural for innovations
to face conflict in the shape of delayed acceptance or thwarting use, while the prevailing
literature speaks loud and clear that innovations’prochange bias results positive as the
users welcome latest services and products (Laukkanen, 2016) and resultantly the
innovation literature confines enquiry into adoption and diffusion aspects (Talke and
Heidenreich, 2014). All these studies have put their efforts to unblock the way of technology
acceptance, but yet there seems to be a giant gap between barriers and mass adoption,
which poses a severe threat to M-banking application, it is promising predictions and the
heavy investment of banks in the innovation infrastructure, by spawning scanty returns,
creating a concerning situation that needs to be put right at sooner possible level to
smoothen the uptake of the technology as well as encourage future investments in latent
innovations as otherwise this grave situation would force banks to terminate their
M-banking services, according to Teo et al. (2012) scarcity of users compelled some
American Banks to shut down their M-banking services.
This study points out barriers that resist potential consumers’determination (both users
and non-users) to use M-banking in Pakistan, leaving the growth rate a bit stable and slow
paced, and further elaborates hurdles and proposes remedial notes to fix barriers, which
pose hindrance to the adoption and usage intention, unlike most past studies that merely
concentrate on SMS banking except very few heading toward M-banking (Shaikh and
Karjaluoto, 2015; Mehrad and Mohammadi, 2016; Mohammadi, 2015a), while others speak of
initial adoption (Yuan et al., 2016; Baptista and Oliveira, 2016) and motivations toward
M-banking (Tam and Oliveira, 2017). Recent studies have only focused on users (Raza et al.,
2017; Mohammadi, 2015a; Sharma, 2017) without considering non-users. Majority of such
studies focus M-banking on technological aspects rather than user behaviors (Sharma et al.,
2017; Wessels and Drennan, 2010). A little attention has been given to the developing
countries, which is of the grave concern (Teo et al., 2012; Sharma et al., 2017). Therefore,
consumer perspective has received less attention (Ferreira et al., 2014), which corroborates
the barriers as an under researched facet (Mehrad and Mohammadi, 2016), leaving a
developing country like Pakistan untapped and, henceforth, making it imperative to study,
identify and examine such antecedents (Glavee-Geo et al., 2017). Some recent studies of
Mohammadi (2015a), Afshan and Sharif (2016) and Hanafizadeh et al. (2014) have left their
research domain just limited to the students of a certain college or university within a
specified jurisdiction or area, which calls to further investigate adoption and usage issues at
a broader level, surpassing the previously restricted domain, consequently, the barriers
remain unexploited, which are explored in this study at the broadest level, and to the best of
authors knowledge, this is the first study in Pakistani context that has investigated
adoption issues at the national level, and accordingly, our study answers the repeated recent
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M-banking
barriers in
Pakistan
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