Meaning of New Means: Exploring the Economic Impact of Mobile Banking on Rural Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the economic impact of mobile banking on rural Bangladesh. It also tries to detect the rural people’s perception about this new financial phenomenon. To meet the goals this study involves both quantitative and qualitative investigation. To get the quantitative data a survey was conducted by a set questionnaire where 300 people from three villages participated. In the qualitative part, semi-structured in-depth interviews of 60 mobile bank users were conducted. Applying grounded theory and hermeneutics approaches, this study finds that since the service of mobile banking is easy and fast, rural people adopted it quickly and it affects positively in the socio-economic development in rural Bangladesh. Its impact on employment creation, business, savings behavior, remittance, expenditure, and agriculture is found good. However, it is also found that the mobile banking services are helping the criminals to do illegal economic activities such as forgery.