Background: In the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, Internet-only/digital-onlybanks are offering alternative approaches to facilitating online transactions and banking in theabsence of physical branches. As a result, traditional, offline banks may possibly experienceincreased pressure in growing and retaining their customer base.Objectives: The objective of this study is to understand the fundamental differencesbetween traditional and digital-only banks’ business models and digital user experiencestrategies from a consumer services perspective. As a result, in this research, we establishedto what extent traditional South African banks have embraced service digitalisation andcompared this to the services offered by South Africa’s first digital-only bank (launchedin early 2019).Method: By means of convenience sampling, we selected the five biggest traditionalbanks and the first digital-only bank in South Africa (as recorded at the start of July 2019)and conducted a comparative analysis of the core digital services that were offered toconsumers.Results: Overall, mobile-optimised services were identified as a key digital business strategy,thereby highlighting the importance of a mobile-first approach not only to traditional anddigital-only banking services strategies but also to digital business model formulation ingeneral.Conclusion: While the overall South African banking landscape and banking user experiencemay be moving towards digital-first and mobile-first, the need for access to banking technologyand services 7 days a week necessitate not only mobile-first, but accessible-foremost (i.e. accessto infrastructure that facilitates access to online banking technologies, both remotely and onpremise) banking business models.
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