Perception of Mobile Banking Adoption on Performance of Commercial Banks in Kisumu City, Kenya

Abstract

Mobile banking is a channel whereby the customer interacts with a bank via a mobile device. Most banking institutions around the globe are moving towards adopting mobile technology based innovations in order to enhance service delivery. Kenyan commercial banks have continued to invest in mobile banking technology and training of manpower to handle this technology. The relationship between the growing investment in mobile banking and bank performance in Kenya has not been done conclusively and hence this study was to establish whether mobile banking adoption has contributed to the performance of commercial banks in Kenya. The previous research done on mobile banking and return on assets have given conflicting results while the research on mobile banking and return on equity never had intervening variables, also the research on mobile banking and revenue the researchers failed to state clearly mobile banking as a variable that has an effect on revenue and lastly the research done on mobile banking and customer base failed to state clearly the effect mobile banking adoption has on customer base. Hence this research intended to fill this gap. The purpose of this study was to establish the perception of mobile banking adoption on performance of commercial banks in Kisumu City, Kenya. The specific objectives of the study included establishing the perception on risk and personal innovativeness on return on assets of commercial banks in Kenya, establishing the perception on risk and personal innovativeness on return on equity of commercial banks in Kenya, establishing how perception risk and personal innovativeness affect revenues of commercial banks in Kenya and determining the perception on risk and personal innovativeness on customer base of commercial banks in Kenya. The theory that guided this study was technology acceptance theory which helped in explaining the acceptance of any information technology in this case mobile banking by users. A correlation research design was used while a questionrtaire was used to gather primary data. Secondary data was also used to validate the communicative and pragmatic validity of primary data. The researcher used secondary data on performance of commercial banks from 2010 to 2014 from the Central bank of Kenya. The researcher believe that this is the period when mobile banking started penetrating the Kenyan banking sector and also when most of the population acquired a mobile device in Kenya. The target population was 208 employees in management of 26 commercial banks operating in Kisumu City as at the end of December 2014 and they were administered with the questionnaires and a 72% response rate was achieved. A census survey was used to collect data from the target population. The reliability of the questionnaire was tested using the Cronbach's alpha correlation coefficient and the results of the reliability test produced 0.887. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software was used for data analysis. The findings revealed that mobile banking adoption had statistically significant influence on return on assets (R=0.704, R 2=0.496), return on equity; (R= 0.972, R 2=0.944), revenue (R= 0.69, R 2 =0.478 and customer base (R=0.731, R2=0.S34 tests for significance also showed that the influence was statistically significant. Based on the findings of the study, it can be concluded that mobile banking influence financial performance of commercial banks in Kenya positively. It is therefore recommended that the management of commercial banks and the government, the relevant policy makers should improve the policies governing the industry and use of mobile banking in financial services for quality and efficiency of their services to the customers to minimize the problems that they get in using the service. Banks should leverage on mobile banking service in order to grow their business and customer base. This study also recommends that a deeper insight into the activities of consumer adoption of mobile banking services and their loyalty should be explored further.