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The huge market penetration of mobile devices, along with the advancement and the rapid diffusion of the wireless and 3G technologies, has created tremendous business opportunities in the global market. Moreover, provided the low costs, the improving computational capabilities and the ease of use of mobile phones, the market of mobile phones and handheld devices is exploding (Singh, Srivastava, & Srivastava, 2010). All together lead to the emergence and endorsement of mobile commerce; which entails the delivery of products and services via wireless technologies that enables internet commerce activities; without the restrictions of time and space. The emergence of such innovations has created highly competitive market conditions and had a critical impact on consumer behavior.
An Evolution of banking services’ delivery arose, as customers are shifting toward technology-based self-service as a substitute of the traditional inter-personal services. Consequently, todays’ banking takes place increasingly through electronic channels (Laukkanen & Cruz, 2009); it is clearly highlighted as “the new service frontier” in this online environment (Wessels & Drennan, 2010)
Mobile banking or M-banking is meant to enable consumers to conduct financial transactions with convenience - without queues, anytime and anywhere - through smart phones, an application and internet connection. Consequently, it helps decreasing the banks’ branches congestions, as well costs per transaction. Mobile phone banking is an emerging facet of electronic banking that, unlike traditional phone banking services, which offer very limited functions, is a rich platform for automated banking and other financial services (Wessels & Drennan, 2010). Even though technology and applications of these services are offered, the usage international rates of mobile banking have been relatively low worldwide (Cruz et al 2010, Singh, et al., 2010, Shin et al 2010, yang 2009, and Laurin & Lin 2005). Mobile banking, the newest delivery channel established by retail banks, is expected to have significant effects on the market (Safeena et al., 2012), as, it resembles new opportunities and new markets for the banking sector (Lee et al. 2007, Johara, 2014). Mobile banking can provide benefits for both the mobile banking service provider and the banks’ customers. In order for mobile banking service providers to effectively provide mobile banking services to its customers, there is a need for proper understanding of the customers’ perceptions, and behavioral attitude toward mobile banking adoption (Laukkanen & Kiviniemi, 2010, Kim et al 2007, Laurin & Lin 2005).
Moser (2015) revealed that there is a fashionable hype around Mobile Banking, suggesting that its acceptance might be related to developments as convenience, usefulness or availability, and that Mobile Banking discourse shows a positive trend demonstrating a wider adoption in near future. Moreover, according to various international researches, the worldwide number of users of m-banking and related services is forecasted to grow significantly. Accordingly understanding the key drivers that may be encouraging and or slowing the adoption have become a relevant topic of interest for the banking sector worldwide. Investigating consumer adoption of new technologies has been a major topic in academic research (Shen et al. 2010); Research has been conducted on the area of mobile banking, with focus on different factors and contexts.
It is significant that the academic empirical research on mobile banking is relatively new, and that there is a scarcity of published literature that explores mobile banking adoption in Egypt, from the consumer behavioral perspective.