An Examination of the Factors that Determine Consumers’ Adoption of Mobile Banking Services in South Africa

Anecdotal evidence from research indicates that the majority of banks at global level are being forced to embrace modern technology in the provision of products and services to their patrons. This is due to competitive pressures, a change in banks’ strategic focus and the ever increasing costs of running businesses against an increase in profitability requirements by shareholders. The risk associated with this is that as banks adopt technologically driven products like mobile banking, a majority of the population may end up being excluded. Based on the convenience sampling approach, and using a structured questionnaire to collect primary data from patrons who are retail banking customers with active bank accounts, this study examined the factors that determine consumers’ adoption of mobile banking in South Africa. Frequencies, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model techniques were applied to analyze survey data using SPSS 21 and Stata 14 statistical programs. The overall Cronbach’s alpha and Keiser-Meyer Olkin values show that the instrument’s items met the internal consistency and statistical validity conditions. Structural equation model estimates show that perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and relative advantage have significant positive influence on mobile banking adoption, but perceived risk has negative but insignificant influence.