Factors affecting use or non-use of plastic money and the attitudes towards plastic money. the case study of Standard Chartered bank, Kenya limited

Abstract

Standard Chartered Bank's strategy has been to introduce simple but good-quality products in Kenya, especially in plastic money, such as ATM cards, centralized networks, and model branches. This contrasts with the dire state of many Kenyan bank networks. Standard Chartered Bank Limited (SCBK) has done much to reform its Kenyan retail operations in the last three to four years. Its main rival is Barclays Bank of Bank of Kenya (BBK), which has also made a lot of Kenya from Kenya over the years, but is now behind in upgrading its operations.

This study was aimed at establishing factors affecting use or non-use of plastic money and the attitudes towards plastic money in SCBK. The blistering pace of plastic money industry in Kenya was set by SCBK in 1989. Other Banks like Barclays Bank of Kenya Limited (BBK) and Kenya Commercial Bank Limited (KCB) have since joined the competition by introducing Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) in their branches. Currently there are over 140 ATMs countrywide and plans are still underway to install more as away of minimizing long queues in the banking halls and also avail banking facilities to customers 24 hours a day. With the rapid growth in number of ATMs available by the major banks is a pointer that there is a major towards use of plastic money as opposed to the traditional over-the -counter customer service.

In order to carry out this study, a sample of 4 SCBK branches in Nairobi with ATM facilities was selected. Interviews and questionnaires were used to capture both quantitative and qualitative data used for analysis. The target was to administer 12 questionnaires per selected branch to get a sample of 48 respondents in total. Among the 12 respondents in each branch 3 were staff members of SCBK working in the same branch. In the final analysis, the researcher managed to get 44 respondents of whom 12 were SCBK staff members and 32 were SCBK customers. The response was 91.7 percent. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS computer package. Linear regression, descriptive statistics and frequency were used to discuss the results.

The findings of this study indicated that the most important factors influencing use of non-use and attitudes towards plastic money in Kenya are age, level of education, level of monthly income and marketing of ATM facilities. The findings of the research conclude that with the technological innovation in SCBK banking system, many customers are happy and willing to maintain their accounts. Even though there has been hue and cry in sections of the press concerning the introduction of new minimum account balances and ledger fees, there is a clear indication that this has not had any negative impact on the ATM utilization. Many customers interviewed in this research expressed willingness to boost their accounts to raise the minimum balances rather than close them and move to other banks. They consider other banks to lagging behind SCBK in terms of technology thus would rather continue getting quality services from SCBK and enjoy the high level of technology in electronic banking and use of plastic money.