MOBILE BANKING ADOPTION IN THE WESTERN EUROPE

The recent explosion in mobile phone growth and use, resulting from consumers' “love affair” with their mobile phones and tremendous advances in data connection speeds and other mobile technologies, offers unprecedented opportunities for banks and other financial institutions to provide their customers with a convenient anytime and anywhere access to mobile banking and payment. Mobile financial stakeholders have experimented with mobile banking and mobile payments for years but have failed to offer the consumer a better alternative than the payment instruments already available, such as cash, checks and cards. In Europe, these mobile financial services projects failed, one of the reasons is, because consumer attitudes are notoriously hard to change. A new mobile financial offering must clearly convince the consumer that it delivers great value – significant enough for the consumer to change their behaviour. There have been successful products and services which were created based on consumer perceptions and not because of the advanced nature of the technology they use.