E-Banking
E-banking can be considered as a high-order construct comprising several distribution channels. E-banking is a larger concept than just banking conducted by the Internet. Nonetheless, the most popular kind of e-banking is today believed to be banking through the Internet - Internet banking.
In its simplest sense, e-banking is viewed as the provision of information or services by a bank to its customers based on a computer, television, telephone, or mobile phone (Daniel, 1999). For instance, under the view of Jun and Cai (2001), Internet banking is seen as an electronic connection between banks and customers aimed at preparing, managing, and controlling numerous financial transactions. By utilizing e-banking, it is very convenient for consumers to access their banks and accounts to implement their banking transactions. In a more sophisticated view, e-banking is named transactional online banking due to the fact that it embeds the provision of facilities, such as accessing accounts, transfer of funds, and buying financial products or services online (Sathye, 1999). In this paper, without loss of generality, the terms e-banking and online banking (or even Internet banking) are used interchangeably.E-banking is seen as the newest delivery channel of banks in many developed countries and is believed to have a significant impact on the banking market (Jayawardhena & Foley, 2000). Nehmzow (1997) contends that e-banking is providing numerous opportunities for banks and non-bank financial institutions to add a low cost distribution channel to their existent distribution channels in order to better serve their customers. However, he further contends that e-banking also brings about challenges to traditional banks because it neutralizes competitive advantages rooted in a traditional banking network.
It is predicted that e-banking will continue mushrooming and this trend may impact the future of traditional banks (Pham, 2010). According to Wah (1999), it is not reasonable to say that such traditional banks are likely to disappear in the near future. Rather, they will be placed on a new level of banking services/products with the support of new and modern distribution channel technologies. Furthermore, Wah (1999) argues that traditional banks can take advantage of new and modern technologies and they are very likely to effectively and efficiently serve their customers. Finally, Wah (1999) concludes that e-banking is really beneficial to customers and that e-banking and traditional banking can coexist.