Innovations in internet banking and banks in Malta

Abstract

In the financial industry, as in any other business sector, innovation is the introduction of a new or improved product/service which aims at decreasing the cost of its production, while increasing customer satisfaction. Banking is an area, where updates in technology demanded innovative services to be delivered. This dissertation describes how Maltese Internet Banking users react to an innovative service being offered online. It seeks to determine the factors affecting the adoption of newly added services offered on a user's Internet Banking account. Thus, the perspective taken by this study concentrates on consumer behaviour patterns. In addition to this, security, which is one major concern of Internet Banking, has been significantly highlighted throughout this entire study. This was done particularly because in the financial industry, a lot of confidential information is kept on online systems. A number of different studies have been conducted in order to examine the customer's perception of Internet Banking and to get a better understanding how these respond to newly offered services online. However, this study is based on a Maltese context. The scope of this study is to find the reasons why there are customers which are not willing to accept newly added services offered by their bank/s online, and to find alternatives in order to avoid this issue. In conclusion of this study, it was revealed that above many other factors, security measures are a main concern for not adopting newly added services immediately. Furthermore, this study also showed that most customers need better communication and support from the bank to actually make use of innovative services. This dissertation concludes with some recommendations, this was done in order to provide the banking sector in Malta with a better understanding of what customers are looking for, so that they start executing most of their banking transactions online.