Use of Internet Banking : Scale Development and Validation

This paper is a customer-centric study to validate a scale for measuring the extent of use of Internet Banking (IB). Exploratory factor analysis grouped 16 major IB services into four major services, viz., request and enquiry services, payment services, tax services and informational services. It is further validated using confirmatory factor analysis. The results of the study suggest that the extent of use is more in the case of informational services, followed by payment services, request and enquiry services, and tax services. Informational services are non-transactional in nature, and hence from the perspective of IB service providers, these services do not generate any revenue for them. The managerial implication of these findings is that banks should encourage their customers to avail IB services which are transactional in nature. This can be achieved by creating confidence in the minds of IB users that it is safe to use IB provided they take the required precautions. The study minimizes the paucity of studies in the domain of extent of use of IB and this forms the theoretical contribution of the study