The Role of Context of Use in the Stabilization of Mobile Banking Products: A Case of Selected Mobile Banking Products in Kenya

Abstract

The poor and marginalized have been excluded from formal banking services for a long time. This exclusion has been occasioned by various factors key among them logistics and economic viability. Mobile banking, a wireless communication innovation promises to break these two barriers by providing access and also aggregating financial transactions by individuals to constitute viability. However despite this breakthrough, products utilizing this mobile phone technology have not experienced success in uptake and use.  A multi case study of mobile banking products in Kenya, informed by the Actor Network Theory established that translation needed to recognize that products were context specific, the stability of mobile banking products was dependent on the interplay of all the actors (animate and inanimate) and what emerges from this interplay. Successful translations depended on how faithful key actors were towards their alliances. Significantly the study established three key theoretical implications in mobile banking if the implementation process had to result to stabilization: No single actor has the ability to set the networks course or impose its own culture and personal goals upon the other nodes sharing the network because the logic of the network sets the rules for participation in the network, a certain size of access points and users was necessary if mobile banking was to sustain itself and translation required that all means be used to ensure that the most successful model of mobile banking is put in place before roll out.