Closing-up the gap between laggards and innovators in mobile banking: An infrastructure perspective

Mobile commerce is becoming more popular by the second all around the world. Organizations of all types started competing to reserve a leading position in this technological race that the explosion in mobile device usage has created. One of the most interesting and growing applications of mobile commerce is mobile banking. The benefits that mobile banking brings to the financial institution (e.g. banks) and its customers are countless. However, despite the clear benefits, in some banking industries there is still a noticeable inconsistency in the level of implementation of m-banking systems among banks. This paper poses an interesting question: what differentiates between leaders and laggards in this area? The aim is to understand, using real-life examples from the Omani market, why is there a gap between the level of m-banking system sophistication and implementation between banks that operate under same market conditions (competition level, regulations, customer demographics, etc). We specifically focus on the infrastructure aspect of these systems and use SMS Banking as an example. Two banks are case-studied as a sample, one that does not offer any SMS banking services (laggard) and one that is leading the industry in m-banking (innovator). Interviews with IT experts in both banks show that the main obstacle that separates laggards from leaders in mobile banking, when it comes to the infrastructure aspect, is the integration rather than the lack in hardware devices or software and programs. This research offers many important implications for both theory and practice.