M.Sc. (Computer Science) / In the rapidly evolving world that we live in, the methods by which items are purchased are starting to be revolutionized. In a developing country such as South Africa, financial institutions within the banking sector are starting to implement their own systems or processes to process bank transactions. These processes include the identification and authentication of bank transactions, as well as the validation of the integrity of bank transactions between buyer and merchant. The changing of these processes by the banking sector could be viewed as a result of the increase in mobile device users. The purpose of the research presented within this dissertation is to explore an alternative method for identifying and authenticating a user in order to authorize a purchase made from a mobile device. The research will include evidence for the necessity of an alternative process as well as investigate the current technology by examining a few mobile banking solutions provided by the banking sector. The alternative process will be based upon a prototype design, which will employ Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to forward the purchase information from a point-of-sale (POS) device to the client’s mobile device, as well as employ fingerprint recognition technology to improve the identification and authentication of a user in order to authorize the purchase. The prototype will be known as BankAuth. The researcher hopes that this dissertation encourages other academics to discover new approaches in further researching mobile banking solutions.

PhD (Finance), School of Economic and Business Sciences, UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND, JOHANNESBURG 8th June, 2016 / This study examines the relationship between financial innovation and financial performance of commercial banks in Kenya, as well as the drivers of financial innovations at both firm and macro levels. The financial innovations covered are the branchless banking models, which represent a departure from the traditional branch-based banking. More specifically, the financial innovations covered are: Mobile banking, agency banking, internet banking and Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). The study uses 10-year panel (secondary) data for the period spanning year 2004 to 2013. The study conducts an empirical analysis of the four types of financial innovations using three econometric models. The models have been specified using Koyck distributed lag models and estimated using dynamic panel estimation with System Generalised Method of Moments (GMM). The speed of adjustment of bank financial performance to financial innovation as well as the speed of adjustment of financial innovation to the financial innovation drivers has been tested using Koyck mean and median lags. The empirical results provide strong evidence of the link between financial innovations and bank financial performance with respect to Kenyan commercial banks. The study makes a number of other findings. Firstly, financial innovations significantly contribute to firm financial performance and that firm-specific factors are more important to the firm’s current financial performance than industry factors. Secondly, firm-specific variables significantly drive financial innovations at firm level with firm size being the most significant driver of financial innovation at firm level. The firm specific factors include firm size, transaction costs, agency costs, and technological infrastructure at firm level. Thirdly, macro level variables significantly drive financial innovation at firm level with regulation being the most important driver at macro level. The macro level drivers reviewed include: Regulation and taxes, incompleteness in financial markets, technological infrastructure at macro level and globalisation. Lastly, the existence of reverse causation between firm financial performance and firm financial innovation is established. The speed of adjustment of firm financial performance to financial innovation has been determined. The results show that it takes on average 1.179 years for bank financial performance to adjust to the four financial innovations studied. Secondly, it takes less than a year (0.368 years) to accomplish 50% of the total change in firm performance following a unit-sustained change in the financial innovations. Moreover, mobile banking has the shortest mean lag (2.849) while ATMs have the longest mean lag (4.926). Therefore, it takes approximately three years for mobile banking to adjust to financial innovation drivers at firm level and on average five years for ATMs to adjust to the financial innovation drivers. By and large, the speed of adjustment of financial innovations to macro level drivers is higher than the speed of adjustment of financial innovations to firm level drivers. This study has made significant contribution to the body of knowledge in the field of financial innovations. The study has developed an econometric model which captures four financial innovations in a single study and empirically used the model to test their link to firm financial performance. The second and third econometric models have also captured the drivers of financial innovations at firm and macro levels. The reviewed literature observes that previous studies have largely focused on financial products in developed countries at the expense of emerging financial innovations in developing countries. In addition, previous studies have also largely ignored empirical approaches to the study of financial innovations. This study has empirically established the link between financial innovations and firm performance by modelling the four innovations in single model in a developing country (Kenya) context. One of the major contributions of this study is the establishment of the speed of adjustment of firm performance to financial innovations and the speed of adjustment of financial innovations to financial innovation drivers at both firm and macro levels. Lastly, the study has developed an original conceptual financial innovation value model (Fig. 6.1), which will be used in future financial innovation studies. This study has a number of managerial and policy implications which have been reviewed in the study. / MT2017

Thesis (MTech (Information Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2009 / The objective of this research project was to provide an answer to the question: 'Which access channel is the most appropriate for mobile applications?' This question is posed by providers of mobile banking services and providers of mobile banking applications alike.

thesis submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Johannesburg, August 2015 / Financial inclusion is promoted as an important economic development program to solve the lack of access to formal financial services for billions of people around the world. The concept “financial inclusion” has entered mainstream business and development discourses as an all-encompassing term for innovation in financial services for the poor. South African policymakers and financial service providers have embraced this approach to address some of the country’s political, social and economic imbalances. A number of examples are held up as successes of financial inclusion such as India’s “Jan Dhan Yojana” initiative. The program, launched in August 2014, signed up 75 million people to new bank accounts in under three months. South African policymakers and financial service providers have also embraced financial inclusion to address the country’s political, social and economic imbalances. Several consequences challenge this optimistic view. The first issue is the high level of dormancy across various services. India’s account has up to 75% dormancy, much like South Africa’s Mzansi account launched expressly for financial inclusion in 2005. It was abandoned by 2012 due to lack of use. The second major issue is adverse inclusion that arises after people are “financially included” and they end up worse off than before. In August 2014 African Bank, the largest lender to low-income individuals in South Africa, failed because it had issued loans to customers who eventually could not afford to repay them. Despite these issues, the focus of financial inclusion remains on targets of density, penetration and geographic access as measured in the World Bank’s Findex, a global financial inclusion database. Practitioners and researchers tend to be concerned with how people as borrowers, savers, bank account users and mobile phone users access and use financial services. Yet an unexplored issue is how these subject positions came to be, how they are maintained and the specific rationalities that accompany them. Following Foucault, this study is an attempt to understand how the concept of financial inclusion has functioned in our society to create human beings as subjects. This is a seven-year genealogical research project of South Africa’s national financial inclusion effort. Over this period, three discourse clusters were identified and analysed. The first cluster consists of 12 texts produced by a range of public, private and civil society institutions. The second cluster of academic discourses on financial inclusion consists of 3 83 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2009 and 2013. The third cluster is a collection of texts from local sources in two townships produced by those individuals who are often the subjects in the other discourse clusters. The analysis reveals dominant modes of objectification in each cluster and the synthesis enables the search for evidence of a regime of truth on financial inclusion. Evidence indicates that dominant discourses of financial inclusion, irrespective of origin, limit subjects to existing practices of money management. Therefore, despite claims of the sweeping changes that can result from financial inclusion, this study argues that this form of development discourse perpetuates existing concentrations of wealth. Counter-narratives that link financial inclusion and asset building offer an important break in this dominance / MT2016

M.Tech. Business Administration (MBA)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Management and Information Systems. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

M. Tech. Business Administration / The aim of this research is to investigate the extent of mobile banking usage among low-income people in Johannesburg. A descriptive design was conducted; data by means of a survey, using self-administered questionnaires, was collected from the inhabitants of the informal settlements of Tembisa and Alexandra Townships in Johannesburg. This represented a total population of about 6000 households. From which, a sample of 200 households was systematically selected randomly.

The ubiquitous nature of mobile phones and their popularity has led to opportunistic value added services (VAS), such as mobile money, riding on this phenomenon to be implemented. Several studies have been done to find factors that influence the adoption of mobile money and other information systems. The thesis looks at factors determining the uptake of mobile money over cellular networks with a special emphasis on aspects relating to perceived security even though other factors namely perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived trust and perceived cost were also looked at. The research further looks at the security threats introduced to mobile money by virtue of the nature, architecture, standards and protocols of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). The model employed for this research was the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Literature review was done on the security of GSM. Data was collected from a sample population around Harare, Zimbabwe using physical questionnaires. Statistical tests were performed on the collected data to find the significance of each construct to mobile money adoption. The research has found positive correlation between perceived security concerns and the adoption of money mobile money services over cellular networks. Perceived usefulness was found to be the most important factor in the adoption of mobile money. The research also found that customers need to trust the network service provider and the systems in use for them to adopt mobile money. Other factors driving consumer adoption were found to be perceived ease of use and perceived cost. The findings show that players who intend to introduce mobile money should strive to offer secure and useful systems that are trustworthy without making the service expensive or difficult to use. Literature review done showed that there is a possibility of compromising mobile money transactions done over GSM

M.Comm. / This dissertation reports on the findings of a study conducted in order to understand the factors that impact on retail bank customers‘ attitudes towards and usage of internet and cell phone banking services in Gauteng, South Africa. A conceptual model based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) plus other variables including trust, subjective norm and demographic variables was used to help understand factors that impact on adoption of electronic banking. Data was collected from customers of the four biggest banks in South Africa namely ABSA, Standard Bank, First National Bank and Nedbank. A total of 394 usable responses were obtained. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) was used to analyse the data. A number of statistical tools were used in the analysis including descriptive statistics, correlation analysis correlation analysis, regression analysis and independent sample ttesting. The findings of the study reveal that customers‘ attitude towards internet and cell phone banking contributes significantly to customer‘s intention to start using or continue using internet and cell phone banking services. The findings also show that while differences in attitude may exist between customers across different demographic groups, demographic factors, alone, are weak predictors of attitude. The study found that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and trust; significantly contribute to customers‘ attitude towards internet and cell phone banking. Of these variables, trust emerged as the most important predictor of attitude towards internet and cell phone banking while the subjective norm was found to be the weakest predicator of attitude. The findings have wider implications on efforts aimed at attracting more customers to start using or continue using internet or cell phone banking services. The implications have also been discussed and suggestions for future research made.

A research report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Commerce in the field of Information Systems / Artificial intelligence (AI) is the creation of intelligent machines that have the ability to work and act like humans and comprises various technologies. AI-powered technology is having a transformative effect on industries such as banking. This study investigated the adoption of AI technologies by South African banking firms. The investigation into the factors that explain the current extent of adoption was focused through the lens of the Technological, Organisational and Environmental (TOE) framework. Through a review of existing literature and online resources, this study firstly identified a basket of AI technologies perceived as relevant for South African banking firms. Six technologies that represent the basket of AI technologies were identified, namely: machine learning, robotic process automation, expert systems, virtual assistants, natural language processing, and pattern recognition. Secondly, the study aimed to determine the current state of adoption of the AI technologies. Thirdly, the study aimed to determine the factors influencing the adoption of AI technologies by banking firms. A systematic literature review was undertaken to determine the technological, organisational and environmental factors that influence technology adoption. A model using pre-determined TOE factors was developed and tested. The cross-sectional, quantitative study was undertaken via a self-administered, online questionnaire to a sample of 307 respondents from South African banking business units, resulting in 62 responses. Diffusion curves were used to illustrate the current adoption of AI technologies. The results revealed that robotic process automation is the most diffused technology, while natural language processing was the least diffused technology. The results also revealed a significant intention to adopt AI technologies in the next three years. The data was subjected to reliability and validity tests which established that the construct measures rendered consistent and reproducible results, and accurately depicted the constructs they were assigned to measure. Thereafter, correlations analysis was utilised to test the model’s hypotheses, and a multiple and stepwise regression were used as further tests of the model. Results revealed that AI technology skills, top management support, firm size and competitive pressure were positively related to the adoption of AI technologies, while perceived benefits, information technology infrastructure, cost, competitive pressure, regulation and mimetic pressure were not supported. AI technologies is a contemporary topic and is gathering a great deal of attention in both academia and practice. By applying the TOE framework, this study has provided a theoretical contribution and addressed a research gap in existing literature, specifically demonstrating that AI adoption is a function of all three contexts, i.e. technological, organisational and environmental. This study also provides a practical contribution for banking firms as they can understand the current adoption status of the average South African bank. Furthermore, for firms considering the adoption of AI technologies, this study offers insights into the relative influence of the TOE factors, and provides guidance to facilitate benchmarking and processes of adoption. / PH2020