Adoption of Internet banking in UAE: Factors underlying adoption characteristics

Abstract

Technological development has provided tremendous benefits for many industries, including the banking business. The diffusion of internet banking has been witnessed in many countries worldwide. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently is one of the most significant economies in its region and in the global arena. Internet banking has been utilized for many years in UAE, and the number of internet banking adopters in UAE has increased steadily. The main focus of this paper was to identify the characteristics of UAE consumers and their attitudes toward the internet banking. Factor analysis suggested seven characteristics important for internet banking adoption, namely compatibility, difficulty, security, trust, third party concern, status, and human contact. Analysis of variance showed that adopters and nonadopters differed on their attitudes toward three factors of adoption: compatibility, trust and human contact. No significant differences were found between attitudes of adopters and non-adopters toward the issues of security, third party concern and status. An interesting finding was that human or physical contact and trust were the most important factors for non-adopters.