| Abstract | Mobile banking (m-banking) is the newest technological innovations in the banking sector that simplifies the accessibility of banking services to customers. M-banking has emerged as an alternative to e-banking and therefore this technology has been widely adopted by developed and developing countries. Afghanistan also due to having severe problems with
the conventional banking system started to launch m-banking service in 2009. Yet, despite efforts and investment made for the diffusion of this technology, the adoption rate is still very much low. Hence, this research is conducted to investigate the major challenges and opportunities of m-banking in Afghanistan as the first objective of this research. Identifying
potential factors that have significant impacts on the adoption of this technology is as the second objective, and providing beneficial recommendations for future assessments as the
third objective of this research. To obtain the objectives, a combination of qualitative and
quantitative research methods is used. A qualitative research method is used to find out the
major challenges and opportunities of this technology by collecting data from primary and secondary data sources. Also, a quantitative research method in the form of a survey is used to achieve the second objective of this study.
To achieve the first objective of this research, in-depth interviews conducted both in the supply-side (bank officials) and the demand-side (customers). The interviews with bank officials focus on four pre-designed patterns (economy, technology infrastructure, rules and
policies, and organization). The result then revealed the major challenges are in economy
and technology infrastructure, and organization parts respectively. While the result of interviews with the customers exposed that customers have main concerns with security, internet quality, risks/fraud, trust, awareness, and interface design of these services. To attain the second objective of this research, a conceptual model is developed based on an extensive literature review and the UTAUT model is selected as a base theory which is extended further and perceived risk is integrated with the original model. To validate the proposed conceptual model of the study, a survey of 250 responded including both adopters and non-adopters is done in four provinces of Afghanistan representing two main urbanized and two less urbanized cites. Then the SEM technique is used to analyze the data and test the hypotheses of
this research. Findings revealed that technical quality factors (system quality, design quality, content quality, and security), precondition factors (customer awareness, perceived trust),
the main behavioral and technological factors (effort expectancy, facilitating condition ) have significant positive impacts on the adoption of m-banking in Afghanistan. While digital literacy and the perceived risk are found having significant negative influences on the adoption of m-banking. Consequently, potential recommendations based on findings are provided for
designers of apps, policymakers, and banks or service providers to overcome the challenges
and efforts needed for future works are recommended further. |