PERCEPTIVE INHIBITIONS TOWARDS USAGE OF TECHNOLOGY BASED BANKING SERVICES IN RURAL INDIA: A FINANCIAL INCLUSION PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Traditionally the banking services in India have been accessible largely to the people from privileged sections of society. Till recently, the poor and underprivileged were excluded from the banking system of the country. Few years back when the incumbent government launched its massive financial inclusion programme, it opened the door for poor, especially coming from farther and rural areas of country, towards banking services, who have never availed these in their lives. However, in order to provide extensive outreach, the technological advancements have been massively utilised for delivery of banking services. The information technology based banking, also termed as electronic banking, paved the way for availability of banking services for people belonging to distant rural areas. However the usage of technology based services by people has become a challenging task, as the technology has never been the part of their lives. The deeply entrenched inhibitions towards technology usage could become an obstruction towards banking services adoption. This research paper aims to study the perceptual inhibitions among rural people towards technology based banking services in order to explore the state of affairs of electronic banking usage in rural areas and garner insights to be used to strengthen the objective of financial inclusion in India.