Digital Banking: Awareness, Acceptance, Social Influence, and Usage Intention and Behavior of Small and Medium Enterprise Owners

This study focuses on the SME owners’ usage intention and behavior towards digital banking and its relationship with their awareness, acceptance, and social influence. A descriptive-correlational and causal research design was used. There were 175 SME owners from Northern Mindanao selected through purposive sampling who participated in the study. A questionnaire was used to gather data. The results of this study revealed that the SME owners were aware of the digital banking facility of their banks; they accepted  the usability of the digital facility in their businesses; other people were influenced to use it, and they were somewhat likely to use digital banking in their business transactions. The awareness, acceptance, and social influence of SME owners on digital banking have a significant  relationship with their usage intention and behavior. Also, their usage intention and behavior are best influenced by their acceptance of digital banking into their businesses. The main concern of SME owners in shifting to the digital banking facility in their business involves online security and erroneous transactions. Therefore, banks and financial institutions must focus on demonstrating and explaining the security features and technical issues that challenge the usage of digital banking among SME owners.

Keywords: digital banking, small and medium-sized enterprises, SME owners, acceptance, usage intention and behavior