INTRODUCTION:

The world is moving forward to the fourth industrial revolution with the continuous development of modern technology. Bangladesh government has also set goals to make “Digital Bangladesh” within 2021. To achieve ‘vision 2021’ Bangladesh government has introduced mobile financial services in 2011. Mobile financial services (MFS) have made a great opportunity for users to get financial services at any place at any time (Lubna, Bhowmik and Ashraf, 2018).

The rapid growth of mobile phones was visible across different classes of people regardless of their educational qualifications, financial capabilities, and technological backgrounds.

According to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) report, the total number of mobile phone subscribers has reached 161.30 million at the end of June 2020, which is almost 97.94% of the total population. The extraordinary development of the mobile sector all over the world has made a special chance for delivering financial as well as social services through the mobile network (Kabir, 2013). Mobile phones have become a popular tool for everybody, which has created a great opening for the development of banking services through mobile phones to reach the formerly unbanked population (Liza, 2014).

At present, 63% of the people live in the rural areas in Bangladesh (World Bank, 2018), of which most of the people didn’t have a bank account (Kabir, Islam and Inam, 2013). In rural areas, formal financial institutions and their services are almost insufficient (Hasan, 2020), because establishing bank branches across rural areas is not an appropriate option due to the costs and regulatory restrictions of the central bank which only grants new branch opening licenses for a maximum of 15 branches in a year (Kabir et al., 2013). Mobile financial service has many positive effects on poor people's lives in numerous ways. Starting from simply sending and receiving money, MFS is used to buy mobile airtime and saves precious time for rural people who would spend on traveling (Islam et al., 2019). Mujeri and Azam (2018) suggest that the MFS providers can reach people living outside mobile phone network coverage locations since it allows people to use mobile phones as an effective distribution channel to lower operational costs, increase financial-services coverage, and extend financial services to un-served populations. Furthermore, as mobile financial service does not require a physical banking facility, so it becomes more useful and inexpensive for rural people (Gupta, Yun, Xu and Kim, 2017). Nevertheless, in emerging economies, the use of mobile devices to execute banking transactions is still low (Upadhyay and Jahanyan, 2016).

Despite developing countries offer huge potential markets for m-commerce service providers, and customers subscribe to mobiles in increasing numbers, the use of mobile banking has not gained grip (Kalinic and Marinkovic, 2016). According to Kabir (2013), the usage of mobile financial services is still a controversial matter among many people because of the cost, availability, and risk involved in such transactions. Additionally, most people do not have a good understanding and abilities about e-banking and/or m-banking. As a result, users have different levels of intention to use mobile financial services (Alkhaldi, 2017). Islam et al. (2019) found that users are also experiencing some problems, for example, security in the transaction, authentication risks, reliability, and connectivity problem between banks and their customers, application security, etc. At present, nearly 50% of the entire rural population of Bangladesh does not use the phone. On the other hand, the user rate is 80% among 16-45 age groups. In rural areas of Bangladesh, only 3% pay bills via mobile, 3% have an online shopping experience and less than 1% earn through online activities (Shadat, Islam, Zahan and Matin, 2020).

Although mobile financial service is safer than digital banking as very few Trojans and viruses exist for phones, mobile financial service is vulnerable to many security threats. Mobile banking users are particularly vulnerable when they receive a fake text message asking for the details of the bank account from a hacker acting as a financial institution. Mobility banking poses security threats such as financial loss, personal data exploitation, cell phone theft, or device loss (Koenig-Lewis, Palmer and Moll, 2010). Gupta and Arora (2017) found that security concerns have noticeably hindered the growth of mobile banking by negatively influencing customers’ attitudes to accept it. It is the prime problem in mobile banking services. The intangibility of mobile banking services is the core reason that hinders customers in evaluating services before actual use and enhances their concern over security issues (Makanyeza, 2017). Customers are anxious about the possibility that their money or personal information might be transferred to other parties without consent when transacting via mobile financial services (Ramdhony and Munien, 2013). Security and trust are the most noteworthy aspects of any mobile banking service, but still, people have more doubts about its trustworthiness and security (Dhillon, 2014). Koenig-Lewis et al. (2010) asserted that customer adoption remains the main difficulty that hinders the development of mobile banking.

Since mobile banking is a new experience to most customers, low awareness of technology features is a strong obstacle to its acceptance (Mohammadi, 2015), which causes low customer demand and insufficient returns on investment. Dhillon (2014) found that most of the rural peoples have very little idea about mobile banking and how it is applied and used. It is observed that only 3% of existing customers are using the services of mobile banking in urban areas and they do not have any clear idea about the advantages of mobile banking. It is improbable that banks will increase their investment in mobile banking if customers do not see any advantages in it and if adoption is not extensive (Koenig-Lewis et al., 2010). Moreover, the high quality and continuity of mobile service connectivity are not available in rural areas (Dhillon, 2014).

Mullan, Bradley, and Loane (2017) suggest that the use of a mobile financial service is at an early phase of adoption in several developing countries (Hossain and Haque, 2014) such as Bangladesh, and warrants more research attention (Komulainen and Saraniemi, 2019). People abstain from using mobile banking because it involves payments (Luarn and Lin, 2005), for example, short message service (SMS) fees, security issues, and small keyboards, and the display screen of the smartphone. So, understanding what prevents customers from using and adopting mobile banking is very important (Koenig-Lewis et al., 2010). Despite there has been a lot of research conducted on the topic of mobile banking abroad, sadly only a few studies were carried out in Bangladesh (Islam and Salma, 2016). Moreover, few pieces of research have been conducted on mobile financial services especially focusing on the rural people of Bangladesh. As rural people are not so habituated with mobile financial services yet, and they are also experiencing different challenges while using MFS. Therefore, it is very necessary to explore rural users’ challenges they face with MFS in Bangladesh.

The purpose of the study is to inquire about the rural mobile financial service users’ difficulties they face with MFS. To satisfy the purpose of the study, a research question was formulated. The research particularly investigated the following research question:

1. What are the challenges rural people face at the time of using mobile financial services?

MATERIAL AND METHODS:

A research design is defined as a plan of research specifying what is to be done and how to do it (Creswell, 2012). This research followed a descriptive research mainly qualitative design.

Location and Sampling:

The research was conducted in a small town and village area of the Barishal district of Bangladesh. The population of this study has consisted of mobile financial service users who live in that rural area.

A sample of 10 MFS users was selected for conducting the study. The users were identified from five Upazila (sub-district) which were located in the Barishal district. Five Upazila were selected using convenience sampling considering the accessibility of the researcher. The researcher used convenience sampling considering the researcher’s easy access as well as the Upazila proximity to the researcher’s place of living. Two MFS users were chosen from each Upazila which means in total 10 MFS users were selected using convenience sampling for interviewing the challenges with MFS. The samples were selected considering easy communication, limitation of time, and financial affordability.

Instrumentation:

This study used a semi-structured interview. The interview schedule was employed on 10 MFS users to understand their challenges with MFS. The interview protocols included 6 open-ended questions to explore users’ difficulties in using MFS. The data were collected in writing during the interview and a smartphone was used to record the data.

Data Analysis Technique:

Data obtained through the interview was analyzed using qualitative approaches for answering the research question. In this study, the qualitative data obtained through the interview was analyzed using the thematic analysis technique. Thematic analysis is a method for identifying and analyzing patterns of meaning/themes in qualitative data (Braun and Clarke, 2014). Thematic analysis results were represented descriptively and narratively.

The sources were coded for analyzing data. In this case, two types of coding were used: alphabetic coding for Upazila and alphanumeric coding for participants. Table 1 shows the coding of the data.

Table 1. Coding of the data source

Categories	Coding Number
Upazilas (5)	U_A, U_B, U_C, U_D, U_E
Interview participant Users (10)	IU₁, IU₂, IU₃…IU₈, IU₉, IU₁₀

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION:

The study findings of challenges faced by rural people at the time of using MFS are presented in some major themes below:

Rural users’ inadequate knowledge and awareness regarding MFS:

The most significant challenge of rural users is inadequate knowledge and low-level awareness about MFS. Rural users with low educational levels have insufficient knowledge about mobile financial services. Although mobile phone usage is increasing among rural people, their MFS usage is still at a very basic level. In Bangladesh, users are increasingly growing the digital lifestyle, but still, most users are not aware of MFS (Hossain and Haque, 2014). Many rural users think MFS can only be used for cash in and cash out. They are not aware of advanced functions of MFS for example, utility bill payment, transfer money to/from a bank or international remittance, and getting a balance statement. Bhuiyan and Rahman (2013) found that most of the mobile users in Bangladesh have very little or no education at all. Users with low-level education have difficulties in understanding the MFS menu because of their little reading capabilities. Many rural Bangladeshis have access to basic or feature phones and most USSD menus are in English. It makes it difficult for them to understand or use MFS properly. Some rural users can't even check MFS balance or understand the basic functions of using MFS. Additionally, rural users’ low literacy has side effects on the confidence level to use mobile financial services. Ahmed, Imtiaz, and Kauser (2020) further added that many people have almost no knowledge about the most advanced features of mobile banking (Apps). Most of the customers do not know how to write a message on mobile and also most of them are unfamiliar with the English language due to illiteracy (Alam, Patwary and Rahim, 2013). Recently, MFS has introduced the Bengali language in the user interface but still, it’s not sufficient for illiterate people to understand and use mobile financial services. Some rural people believe that mobile banking is for upper-class people only because upper-class people have a high balance to afford it (Regmi, 2015). According to Ramdhony and Munien (2013), people with having high education are more disposed to use MFS because education shaped their perception of innovations and technologies making them more willing to use MFS.

Three respondents mentioned that the MFS payment process is very complex for them and they need others to help to do that. One of the users U_CIU₅ said, “I don't know how to use MFS. My neighbor installed it on my phone. Whenever I got money in the account, I went to the nearest agent for cashing out purposes. They do everything on my behalf." As rural users need other assistance to make the payment or understand basic functions, so they become dependent on others with MFS. Similarly, People were affected by their limited awareness of mobile financial services (Bai, 2019; Mohammadi, 2015) and they can’t operate them in a useful manner (Rahman, Tazim, Das and Islam, 2020). If mobile financial service is not as simple as making a phone call or listening to music from a mobile phone, it won’t be able to make popular among the mass people in Bangladesh (Bhuiyan and Rahman, 2013). If rural people find MFS easy then it can be assumed that other users will also able to use it comfortably.

High transaction charges of MFS:

The study demonstrated that maximum rural users were unhappy due to the high transaction cost of MFS. They mentioned that their biggest challenge is the unbearable transaction cost of MFS. Poor and unbanked rural people can’t afford this price. Users running small business thinks the high fees of MFS is a huge burden for them. The previous study also found that most of the users are dissatisfied with the high transaction charges of MFS (Hasan, 2020; Sarpong and Agbeko, 2020). In contrast, Alam et al. (2013) found that most of the users believe mobile banking has a lower cost compared to traditional banking. Therefore, most Indian Banking customers prefer traditional ways of banking (Sushma, 2018). Most of the respondents mentioned that it will be better to handle cash rather than using it through mobile financial services due to high charges. One respondent U_AIU₂ uttered, “If I have ten thousand (10,000.00) taka in my MFS account, I will get one hundred seventy-five (175.00) taka less after the cash-out. So, why would I keep money in an MFS account?" Three respondents believe that MFS is more expensive than traditional banking. Rural and unbanked people belong to the mostly poor or lower-middle-income segment of society. Every penny is valuable for them. Many rural users feel discouraged to use MFS due to its 1.75% cash-out charge. The high fees charged by MFS created a huge barrier for many rural users.

Low level of security and trust concerning MFS:

The current worldwide financial crisis made the banks the biggest defaulters. People now have become very unwilling to have unconditional faith in banks and they believe that everything their banks introduce is not safe and secure (Bhuiyan and Rahman, 2013). This study explored that, rural users don’t believe in the MFS system fully because of the numerous fraudulent activities that occur with MFS. Similarly, the previous study found that numerous people still do not trust the MFS system as they are concerned about their faulty transactions or frauds (Ahmed et al., 2020; Ramdhony and Munien, 2013). On the contrary, other researchers found that most people believe that mobile banking is fairly or highly secured (Alam et al., 2013; Bhuiyan and Rahman, 2013). Ahmed, Islam, Rayhan and Mahjabin (2012), and Liza (2014) argued that people have high levels of trust across all three perspectives: the banks, mobile service providers, and wireless infrastructure. Many rural users have a problem recalling and correctly enter a PIN. So, they use generic PINs such as 1234. Sometimes they share it with others, including agents, which increases the potential risk of theft. The loss of a user’s mobile device often means that criminals can gain access to the MFS PIN and other sensitive information (Bai, 2019). Criminals use that information to blackmail other users. Bhuiyan and Rahman (2013) suggested that there are concerns about the security of the MFS relating to the confidentiality of the PIN. Most of the time rural users couldn’t able to maintain the secrecy of PIN and they become a victim of criminal activities.

Four respondents mentioned that the MFS system cannot be trusted since the system can be breached by hackers. All the respondents mentioned that they fear losing their money from the MFS account because they have heard about numerous fraudulence incidents regarding MFS. Maximum users have safety concerns about using mobile financial services. Three users got the call from fake MFS agents who wanted PINs from them. They think their money may be lost from their MFS account anytime by hackers. A respondent U_EIU₁₀said,

Two years ago, I got a call from a fake MFS agent. He told me that I won a pressure cooker as a prize. He told me that I would get a code in a message now, I should tell him. I instantly got a code and told him that code. I never told him my PIN. But, still, I lost twenty thousand (20,000.00) taka from my MFS account. I never got back that money.

Islam et al. (2017) explored that security concern is a major threat that hinders the growth of mobile banking in Bangladesh. The security of MFS has in recent times been questioned as more and more fraudulent activities pass through the MFS system (Sarpong and Agbeko, 2020). Rural people feel unsafe keeping a large amount of money in their MFS accounts. Many rural users were victimized by fraudulent activity and lost their life savings from their MFS account. As the security of MFS service is not up to the mark, so sometimes people lose their account because hacker or fraudulent users can easily hack users account (Rahman et al., 2020). But, Liza (2014) found that all the respondents remained neutral about the security/privacy risk of the mobile banking service. Hossain and Russel (2017) added that MFS has reduced the corruption and frauds done by dealers, media, and brokers in rural areas.

Three respondents mentioned that there is a high risk of losing their money from the MFS account. One user added that, if someone sends money to the wrong person’s account by mistake, then the transaction can’t be reversed. It creates high uncertainty with the MFS payments system. Chavali and Kumar (2018) also found that mobile banking is risky during fund transfers because careless mistakes may cause financial loss. It creates more negative effects among users as there is no recovery system for any error (Khan, Akter and Akter, 2017). Rural users are still very amateur with MFS, that's why they may do mistakes during the transaction and lose money. The MFS doesn’t allow reversing back transactions if it was made to the wrong account by mistake, so the risk becomes higher and the trust level comes to the lower level for rural users.

Harassment of female by male MFS agents:

The greatest barrier for rural women to use MFS is the lack of female agents in the community. Women users fear male agents as a result of suffering harassment and eve-teasing from them. Two respondents claimed that their wives' phone numbers were leaked by MFS agents after transactions. Then, their wives got disturbed again and again by those agents. Most agent places are located in crowd place which makes unsafe for female users to go there. Women feel uncomfortable going to a crowded marketplace. A respondent U_AIU₁said, “Whenever I send money through MFS, I feel insecure with my wife to collect that money from the nearest agent. She also doesn't like to go to them because the place is very crowded and seems unsafe for her." In Bangladesh, rural women are very traditional-minded. Women users’ safety is the primary concern for every rural people. Lubna et al. (2018) suggested that some factors such as user-friendly services, number of branches and agents, rules and regulations, culture, norms, knowledge level, behavioral differences, security, speed, and mobility can ensure women’s participation in MFS in Bangladesh. According to Akhtaruzzaman et al. (2017), female participation in the MFS industry of Bangladesh is still small. Because the distributor-agent relationship pattern is still very inflexible, females have to visit nearby markets for taking any mobile banking services, lack of knowledge about the services, etc. Most of the time female users take the help of a male relative who might take advantage of this opportunity to fraud female users. Without female user-friendly service mass women, participation in mobile financial service would be near to impossible.

The inefficiency of customer care services:

Sometimes rural users face problems with their MFS which cannot be solved by agents. At that time, they need help from customer care services. Five respondents mentioned that contact with customer care centers is very expensive and difficult. Most of the time the connection remains busy or no customer care representative receives the calls. One respondent claimed that customer care behaves rudely with him as he couldn't able to express his problem clearly to them. Users took a long time to connect with a customer care agent due to a lack of agents and a bad network. Another respondent U_DIU₈told, “I could able to reach a customer care representative over the telephone after trying almost thirty (30) minutes. I spoke with him for ten (10) minutes which costs me nearly twenty (20) taka. The cost is huge for me." Akhtaruzzaman et al. (2017) explored that the agents are not competent in dealing with customers' queries and complaints. They do not know how to provide entire services to clients. They are even blamed for colluding with miscreants in illegal transactions through MFS in Bangladesh. Some respondents mentioned that there is no clear guideline about the complaining registration process and where to do that or how much time an MFS provider needs to solve those problems. Sometimes, it takes months for rural users to get any solution for their problems of MFS.

Lack of interoperability among MFS providers:

Another huge hindrance of MFS is the lack of interoperability. Almost all the respondents mentioned that the MFS features are very limited. Users can’t able to send money among different MFS and they are forced to use multiple MFS to get full efficiency of MFS. Rural users become puzzled in using different brands MFS. It makes the whole situation complex for them. Rural users with bank accounts prefer traditional banking rather than MFS for interoperability among banks. One user U_DIU₇uttered, “I can send money from my DBBL bank account to any other bank account such as AB bank. But I can't do the same in the case of mobile financial services. Then, why should I use it?" As the MFS market is a concentrated market share across MFS providers, so lack of interoperability in Bangladesh is definite. Most of the users use MFS of the same provider and the low willingness of the dominant MFS creates a lack of interoperability (Mujeri and Azam, 2018). Dominant MFS providers like Bkash don’t want interoperability because it won’t be profitable for them. Many foreign countries have introduced interoperability which boosted the MFS.

Cash dominated rural society:

Rural areas are still cashed dominant and the acceptance level of mobile money is still very low. All the respondents use mainly cash in their day-to-day life. Most of the users mentioned that there are very few places where they can use mobile money at all. In rural areas, everyone accepts cash rather than mobile money. So, saving money in an MFS account seems to be not so useful for them. One of the respondents U_EIU₁₀said, “I cannot buy vegetables or fish or daily necessary products with my mobile money. Small shopkeepers in rural areas also don't accept digital money in some cases. So, I keep money in my money bag rather than MFS account." Rural people have very limited options for buying and selling anything with the digital money of MFS. Moreover, Inam and Islam (2013) mentioned that mobile banking doesn’t have a variety of deposit schemes or investment/loan schemes as traditional banking yet. MFS doesn’t have much acceptance or diversified schemes like formal banks, therefore rural people rarely prefer to use MFS.

Technological error with MFS:

Technological and system error is very common in MFS. Rural users can’t make a transaction or take a huge time to do a transaction due to this error. Two respondents mentioned that they couldn’t able to send money due to a network problem. One of the users found that transaction time takes too long (more than 5 minutes). Another respondent U_AIU₁ told that “Sometimes, I can’t log in to my Bkash account app. Then I need to restart my phone again and again. When I called customer care, they told me it's maybe for some technological difficulty of Bkash.” Users can’t able to access their MFS account for network problems or compatibility issues of their phone. It means they can’t use their own money in need as it’s stored in the MFS account. Khan et al. (2017) added that sometimes due to the high load of users, the server got down. Recovery of the server takes some time that leads to a great loss to users as they failed to transact money. The central feature of MFS is its real-time money transfer. Technological problem destroys that feature and makes MFS useless for rural users. Rahman et al. (2020) found that in rural areas, users were unable to utilize mobile banking services because the internet connection is very poor or there might be a poor network connection. In rural area user experience problems with an internet connection and they won’t be able to access their account efficiently (Bai, 2019).

Liquidity crisis and distance of nearest MFS agent:

Most of the rural users use MFS for cash in and cash out purposes. But, local agents have limited balance which often becomes insufficient for rural users. Five respondents told that during festivals or in any crisis period nearest agent doesn’t have enough funds for cash out. When the nearest agent doesn’t have enough cash, users need to go a long distance to get their cash. It’s not only time-consuming but also expensive for rural users. This study sought that during festivals and crisis period’s rural people need to travel a long way to make a payment or cash out money. Likewise, Hasan (2020) found that during Eid or any national ceremony, users of the rural areas face problems to withdraw much money due to insufficient balance of the agents in the company with the availability of agents which is poor in rural areas. One of the respondents U_CIU₆uttered, “During the covid-19 crisis my brother sent me money from another city. Due to the scarcity of cash, I could not able to get money from our nearest agent. So, I had to travel 30 minutes to cash out from MFS.” There is a huge scarcity of MFS branches in rural areas. It creates inconvenience for rural users because whenever local agents can’t provide any solution for them, they can’t reach MFS branches.

This research has established that several issues are causing challenges for rural users during their use of mobile financial services. Rural users’ scarce knowledge and awareness, incompetence of customer care agents, harassment of female users; cash dominate society, lack of interoperability, huge transaction fees, low level of security, trust, and technological error of MFS are the core challenges for people to use MFS. MFS providers are mainly blamed due to generating these challenges for rural people. Challenges of rural users with MFS have created a negative impact on their actual use of MFS. Many rural users are still out of the reach for MFS due to these challenges. A good number of rural people have given up using MFS because of the never-ending difficulties with MFS. So, MFS providers and government must come forward to find necessary ways to reduce these challenges of rural users with MFS.

CONCLUSION:

MFS is a fast-growing business. Bangladesh has introduced MFS to reduce poverty especially in rural areas and ensure financial inclusion all over the country. So, MFS providers need to make some effective development to the quality of their service to ensure smooth transactions in the rural area. MFS providers would able to design their service only after understanding rural users' difficulties with it.

This study has explored rural users' core challenges with MFS and its negative impact on their actual use. It can be used as a point of reference for the government in bringing the unbanked rural population under formal banking channels through increasing the use of mobile financial services. This study would help the central bank in making necessary policy and providing helpful guidelines to all stakeholders so that MFS can become more prospective for the rural disadvantageous people.

Mobile financial service is an emerging sector and there exist huge potentials for the whole economy of Bangladesh. MFS makes formal banking more convenient and accessible for users as it offers real-time online banking, available anytime, anywhere throughout the country. It has covered the whole country within a short time targeting low-income and unbanked populations. At present people get modern financial transaction facilities through their MFS which is a very attractive feature than the traditional banking system. There is increasing growth in the acceptance of mobile financial services all over the country. But in reality, MFS is very much new for rural users. The degree of awareness for MFS is not up to the mark yet. The safety-security and affordability of MFS have negatively impacted rural peoples' MFS use. Proper methodologies need to be identified to show rural users how MFS facilitates access to banking services for them. The reduction of risk associated with MFS can certainly reduce challenges as well as may prove to be an important innovation for developing countries like Bangladesh.

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Received on 08.06.2021 Modified on 20.07.2021

Asian Journal of Management. 2021;12(4):359-366.

DOI: 10.52711/2321-5763.2021.00054