The Differences in Perceptions of Continuous Intention to Use Mobile Banking Apps: Evidence From Kuwait and Serbia

Introduction

Digital transformation is one of the biggest challenges in all industries, including banking (Schuchmann and Seufert 2015). The changes in people's habits and the way they access financial services are a result of the increasing use of the Internet and mobile devices. As a result, people are more interested in banking services that are available anywhere, anytime and are easy to understand and use. Economies from all around the world, especially developing countries, face challenges with financial inclusion (M. S. Antonijević et al. 2022). Digital banking, i.e. the creation and delivery of products/services through digital channels using state-of-the-art technology to identify individuals' needs, automate services and interact with customers across all channels, seems to be an obvious solution for enhancing financial inclusion and constantly changing customer habits and preferences. Mobile banking is a form of digital banking where the customer is connected to a bank via a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet (Laukkanen 2017). Mobile banking is known to be a digital financial service offered by banks to enable customers to do their banking without having to be physically present in the bank or having ATMs available.

Over the past decade, the academic community has become increasingly interested in studying factors and measuring their impact on the continuous intention to use mobile banking services. Albashrawi and Motiwalla (2019) define continuance intention as intent to continue using mobile banking services after the initial adoption phase.As banks seek to provide the best digital solution to their customers, it is important to understand the factors that influence the continuous use of digital banking services. The continuous use of mobile banking apps has been extensively studied by many authors (Tsai et al. 2014; Hanafizadeh et al., 2014; Yuan et al. 2014; Vedadi and Warkentin 2016; Lema, 2017; Kumar et al. 2018; Albashrawi and Motiwalla 2019; Avornyo et al. 2019; Waheed et al. 2019; Merhi et al. 2019; Lukić et al. 2019; Kuncoro et al. 2020; Jerene and Sharma 2020; Asnakew 2020; Poromatikul et al. 2019; Antonijević et al. 2021; Rabaa’i and AlMaati 2021; Abu-Taieh et al. 2022; Shetu et al. 2022; Yin and Lin 2022; Alghareeb 2022; Inan et al. 2023). The most obvious gap in the current literature on the continuous use of mobile banking concerns the study of cross-cultural variations and comparisons between countries with different levels of economic and technological development, as residents may have different perceptions and attitudes. These cross-cultural differences and country comparisons have been recognised by many authors and recommended for future research (Yuan et al. 2014; Kumar et al. 2018; Avornyo et al. 2019; Asnakew 2020; Shetu et al. 2022; Yin and Lin 2022; Inan et al. 2023). In one of the rare comparative studies of this type, Malaquias and Hwang (2019) examined differences in mobile banking use between Brazilian and US citizens. As far as the authors are aware, there are no comparative studies on the continuous use of mobile banking apps between Kuwait and Serbia.