Potential growth opportunities for SMS based utility payments and banking services in Sri Lankan context

Abstract

Mobile phone has started to touch the hearts of millions of Sri Lankans while Internet is still not accessible for many of them. Therefore if people can save money and time by conveniently carrying out banking and utility payments transactions through the mobile phone from where they are, it should obviously hit the society with lot of socio-economic benefits. But the reality is that the strength of the SMS based payments has not been exploited to its full potential in Sri Lanka though it is experimented by many banks and mobile operators in the country. The main objective of this research was to investigate the influential factors that have led these services to be unpopular among Sri Lankans. A model, which can be used to promote these services in the country, was produced at the end of the research. Global research findings on mobile and SMS based banking and payments, identified through the literature were discussed. A qualitative study was carried out to identify the influential factors pertaining to mobile and banking industry. User perspectives were identified through a questionnaire based survey conducted with a selected sample of mobile subscribers banking with four leading banks in Sri Lanka. Data gathered from the consumer survey were statistically analyzed through linear regression analysis and simple correlation analysis. It was concluded that there is a significant relationship between the SMS based payment services usage and the influential factors such as awareness, security confidence, service reliability and the SMS usage intensity of the mobile subscribers. However, there was no significant linear relationship between services usage and easy usability of the services. It was also concluded that SMS based banking and payments services offered by the mobile operators and banks in Sri Lanka, are not aligned with the business strategies of the respective organisations.