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TopM-Banking: An Overview
The banking industry in the 21st century operates in a fast changing and complex environment. Prevailing uncertain economic conditions in the environment have compelled banks to think differently about the implementation of ICT applications in day-to-day operations (Alawode, John, & Kaka, 2011). The focus of banks to use ICT applications for improving business operations has contributed towards growing popularity of electronic banking (popularly known as e-banking). This new mode of banking is related to the delivery of bank information and services to its customers through different mediums such as personal computer, mobile phone, telephone, and even digital television (Daniel, 1999). E-banking includes both internet banking and m-banking. The difference between internet banking and m-banking is that with internet banking, computers are connected through the internet. In case of m-banking, the connections are made through mobile networks of the customer’s wireless devices (Asfour & Haddad, 2014).
M-banking is considered a subset of e-banking (Safeena, Date, Kammani, & Hundewale, 2012). It is the latest development in ICT implementation among banks. M-banking provides great value to customers’ banking transactions through wireless channels of service delivery (Pousttchi & Schurig, 2004). M-banking involves different transactions such as making balance enquiry, doing credit transfer, checking account status, sending SMS and performing payment transactions through a mobile phone (Saleem & Rashid, 2011). This service can be accessed on the mobile phone of the customer by using the particular bank’s application (popularly known as app) (Bank Negara, 2012). Several suitable bank specific applications for m-banking access include Symbian, Blackberry OS, Andriod, Windows and Apple iOS, to name a few (Reserve Bank of India [RBI], 2014). M-banking benefits both the customers as well as banks (Ensor, Montez, & Wannemacher, 2012) and provides different advantages over internet banking due to service ubiquity (International Telecommunication Union [ITU], 2012). Banks can considerably reduce costs of providing service to the customers and mobile service providers can generate more profits from their existing subscribers due to wider use of different value added services (Gupta, Bagoria, & Bagoria, 2013).