Mobile Banking Adoption in the United States: Adapting mobile banking features from low - income countries

This is a work-in-progress research paper on Mobile Banking (mBanking) in the USA that draws upon mBanking deployment successes in low-income countries. The research investigates mBanking adoption at a large (over 24,000 students) university in the southeast United States, with plans to collect data from low-income countries (Ghana, Kenya, and Ethiopia). The completed study will compare the results from the USA to those in low-income countries with a view to developing a theoretical framework that compares US adoption patterns to those in low-income countries. The paper has three objectives: identification of the core mBanking features evidenced in the dominant mBanking solutions within low-income countries, identification of a theoretical framework for mBanking use, and an empirical study to understand the adoption of mBanking in the US as contrasted to its adoption in the low-income countries. We borrow from Internet banking studies and adapt a theoretical framework for mBanking use. We conduct surveys and interviews to empirically test our theoretical model. We identify common mBanking features from solution providers in low-income countries and apply it to our target population in the US. In January 2011 the United States’ Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), as a major part of its economic inclusion campaign to reach out to the unbanked and under-banked communities, sponsored nine banks to launch economic inclusion program for the seventeen million unbanked and forty-three million under-banked residents in the United States (Corporation 2011). Students are part of these sixty million people that make up the unbanked and under-banked US residents. Students aren’t building the credit history needed to get loans and often are unable to take advantage of the less costly forms of financial products. There are similarities between low-income countries and the unbanked and under-banked communities in the US. Hence, this study looks at common mBanking features in low - income countries and tests to see their likely adoption in the US

Testing a Modified TAM that Accounts for Realities of Technology Acceptance in Sub Saharan Africa

One of the motivations for this paper is to enhance our understanding of the interactions that come to bear between some socio-economic development needs and factors generally innate to sub-Sahara Africa that manifest to impede technological adoption in the region. Developing countries, of which all sub-Sahara Africa countries are part, lag in adopting foreign technologies for various reasons, among which are institutional, cultural, geo-political, tribal, and economic policy factors. This research is an examination of some antecedents to the perceived user resource model, which in turn was developed from the original TAM literature; it also extends ideas espoused in Information Technology literature related to socio-economic development. We validate the model by analyzing survey data gathered in two representative Sub-Saharan Africa countries. We offer some diagnostics and prescriptions for how to effect a sustainable technological adoption and development across the region