An analysis of Internet Banking in Portugal

In recent years, mobile operations have gained wide popularity among mainstream users, and banks tend to follow this trend. But are bank customers ready to move forward? Mobile banking appears to be a natural extension of Internet banking, . Thus, to predict consumer decisions to adopt mobile banking, it’s useful to understand the pattern of adoption of Internet banking (IB). This investigation seeks contribute to an expansion of the knowledge regarding this matter by researching Portuguese consumers’ patterns and behaviors concerning the acceptance and use intention of IB as a foundation for establishing growth strategies of mobile banking. For data collection, we used an online “snowball” process. The statistical treatment used included a factor analysis in order to allow examination of the interrelationships between the original variables. The analysis was made possible by developing a set of factors that expresses the common traits between them. The results revealed that the majority of respondents did not identify problems with the use of and interaction with the IB service. The study generated some interesting findings. First, the data generally supports the conceptual framework presented. However, some points need to be made: (i) trust and convenience, from all the elements referenced in the literature as relevant from the client’ perspective, continue to be a very important elements; (ii) the results did not support the paradigm that the characteristics of individuals affect their behavior as consumers, (iii) individual technological characteristics affect consumer adoption of IB service; (iv) consumer perceptions about the IB service affect their use, as reveal by the existence of three types of customers that show different practices and perceptions of IB; and (v) intention to use IB is dependent upon attitudes and subjective norms regarding the use of IB. 1 Keywords—internet banking; mobile banking; technology adoption models; Portugal