The relationship between perceived ease of use, perceived usefullness, behavioural intention to use and acceptance of mobile banking services: the case of commercial banks in Kenya

Abstract

Mobile phones play a big role in making life convenient, productive and significantly easier to transact. Most transactions can now be done electronically from almost any location with M-commerce technology. M-commerce involves transacting goods and services, which is done by utilizing mobile access via networks with the use of mobile banking and mobile devices. This service has provided banking services to all people including unbanked, those without bank accessibility or bank accounts, those living in remote areas, and those who are at the bottom of the economic pyramid. It’s evident that problems of being under banked and unbanked could be overcome if financial services were delivered over a mobile phone since there are more mobile phone owners than bank accounts owners. Despite the benefits achieved from using the mobile banking services like convenience, flexibility, simplicity and low cost plus its potential of improving the financial services its acceptance and usage rate is still low. The objective of the study was to determine the relationship between perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, behavioral intention to use and acceptance of mobile banking services. A descriptive design was adopted to study and analyze the variables. A cross sectional and correlation quantitative analysis was also adopted to evaluate the acceptance of mobile money. The study population consisted of all the 43 Commercial Banks in Kenya. The study sampled 12 commercial banks. The study used purposive sampling technique to sample 10 users of mobile banking services from each of the 12 Commercial Banks. Data was collected using both primary and secondary methods. Data was analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics. The study found that most of mobile banking users use their mobile banking for paying bills, cash withdrawal and buy airtime. The results show that mobile banking users think interaction with mobile banking does not require a lot of mental effort and that it is easy to use and learn how to use mobile banking system. The study found that mobile banking services in overall is advantageous, banks are trustworthy and that they would not feel totally safe providing personal privacy information over mobile banking. Evidence shows that transaction fee (bank charges) is expensive to use, mobile banking may not perform well because of network problems and they think mobile banking is expensive. The results also revealed that perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and behavioral intention to use are positively related to acceptance of mobile money services. The study further found that he more people will perceive mobile money system as easy to use, the more their intention and willingness to use the system will increase. The results indicate that perceived usefulness highly influences the behavioral intention to use mobile money services that is if people perceive a technology as useful their behavioral intention to use increases. The study recommends then system designers and developers should endeavor to achieve user friendliness in a technological system so as to increase the end users’ perceived ease of use of the system.