E - Banking in Sudanese Banking Sector: Between New Opportunities and Challenges

Development of information technology in the last few years, have brought about a lot of changes in almost all facets of life. In the banking industry, it has been in the form of banking services offered through an electronic channel. Electronic banking is the wave of the future, it has a lot of benefits which add value to customers’ satisfaction in terms of better quality of service offerings and at the same time banks can gain more competitive advantage over other competitors. Despite this there are a lot of challenges that may hinder the success of e-banking services and thus constitute major concern to both financial institutions and customers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and focus on the different opportunities and services of e-banking in Sudanese banking sector, and the challenges associated with it. Regardless, the different e-banking services found in Sudan but still there are a lot of challenges associated with its successful implementation. This paper followed the analytical/qualitative method to investigate such a problem. Both primary and secondary data were collected, and excel was used to analyze collected data. Keywords— E-banking, Sudanese banking sector, Opportunities and challenges, e-banking services. Introduction: Rapidly growing of Information technology has changed the way financial transactions are done in banking industry globally. This form of technological advancement has enhanced the delivery of banking services, and was reflected in the introduction of E-banking (electronic banking). E-banking means an electronic handling of all types of banking transactions, primarily over the internet. Through ebanking any user with a personal computer and a browser can get connected to his bank -s website to perform any of the virtual banking functions. In internet banking system the bank has a centralized database that is web-enabled. All the services that the bank has permitted on the internet are displayed in menu. Any service can be selected and further interaction is dictated by the nature of service. EBanking uses today's computer technology to give user the ability to manage their finances more quickly and efficiently, from anywhere around the world, and with just a click of the mouse. Banks perceive online banking as a powerful 'value-added' tool to attract and retain new customers, while helping to eliminate costly paper handling University of Medical Sciences and Technology Faculty of Business Administration Department Of Accounting and Finance Khartoum, Sudan and teller interactions. EBanking has managed to provide customers the convenience, efficiency, effectiveness, and most importantly, the speed needed in today's dynamic world. As more banks around the world are offering online banking to its customers, it is becoming a rather popular trend. However, countries like Sudan started to offer this service but still it’s far away from implementing this new innovation in an effective manner. E-banking services: Electronic banking can be divided on the basis of the instruments used: the below figure shows these instruments and their sub divisions; Figure 1; E-banking services 1. Electronic Banking Using a Telephone Connection: Electronic banking using a telephone connection can be divided in to two:  Phone banking (ATS) and  Mobile banking (SMS banking, GSM SIM Toolkit and WAP). Phone banking; Is the provision of banking services using a classic telephone line. A bank client can obtain the necessary information on dialing a telephone number specified in advance. Before the requested banking service information is provided, the client’s identity is determined using contractually agreed terms. The client advisor or so-called telephone banker is a bank employee capable of providing any information about