E-banking: challenges and opportunities in the Greek banking sector

Abstract

Internet technologies have a great potential for changing fundamentally the banks and the banking industry. The opportunities, which the e-banking services and technologies offer to the banking sector in order to fulfil existing customer needs and to attract new prospective customers, are the driving forces for banks in order to design, develop and operate their own e-banking systems. This paper examines the challenges and opportunities of e-banking for the Greek banking sector, during the e-commerce era, and also presents the results of a survey of banking executives working at banks offering e-banking services. The main findings demonstrate that banks expand to e-banking services in order to remain competitive, to keep track with technological developments and to benefit from the lower cost of e-banking transactions. The major problems they face are the low response rate from customers and the implementation of security and data protection mechanisms. The relatively low Internet usage, the non-familiarity with technologically advanced devices and problems regarding security and privacy are the main factors that have a negative influence on the adoption of e-banking services by customers in Greece.