The development of mobile banking services in a large Finnish financial organization

Abstract

The chapter, based on an ongoing qualitative study, provides answers to the following questions: what are the case organizations’ rationales in developing mobile banking services? how are customer perspectives considered in developing them? and what are the implications of digitalization and m-banking for the bank and the client? Based on the findings, m-banking is seen to allow ubiquitous availability and efficiency of service provision, offering a sound rationale for their development. The flipside is that digital and m-banking services dilute the human interaction, which challenges the rationale of improving the customer experience. The service development follows the software industry mode: customers are involved in the later phases of development to test and improve the usability of the service. This means service ideas are fitted to the needs and use habits of customers’ after-the-fact. The increased use of m-banking services paves the way to a self-service culture in banking services, and transforms customers to self-service operators providing many of their banking services themselves on technological platforms provided by financial institutions. The availability of m-banking services and automation of routines improve the life of the customer, and by streamlining the internal processes of the bank, provide efficiency gains for both parties. The increasing use of digital and mobile banking services heightens the importance of deeply understanding the customers, calling for active listening and dialogue, as well as bearing in mind the customers’ role as active participant in developing and launching new services.