Banking Access for the Poor: Adoption and Strategies in Rural Areas of Bangladesh

Abstract

The progress of Mobile Banking (M-banking) is unsatisfactory in terms of achieving a key objective, i.e. to reach the inaccessible unbanked customers at an affordable cost for financial inclusion. We identify the causes to this problem through the investigating the factors affecting the adoption of m-banking in remote areas of Bangladesh using a 236 primary sample of m-bank customers from seven geographical locations and across professions. We document a positive effect of perceived ease of use, trusts, and perceived usefulness, and a negative effect of user interface on adopting m-banking in rural Bangladesh. our findings provides significant policy implications for policy planners and the bank managers to enrich their policies and strategies for promoting financial inclusion as well as successful banking business in rural of Bangladesh.