Factors Influencing Individual Customers Trust in Internet Banking: Case of Baltic States

Abstract

The investigation of trust in commercial banks needs to focus specifically on internet banking, as it is the fastest growing banking service. The article explores factors influencing trust in internet banking and estimates this impact in the Baltics states. The factors are as follows: Provided information, e-banking system, the website of a bank, and a bank’s characteristics. Overall, 1013 respondents and 21 experts took part in the current study. The results of the respondents’ survey showed that the factor that is necessary for trust building in all the examined countries differs: In Lithuania, information and the bank, in Latvia, the website, and in Estonia, the bank. According to the experts, the most powerful factor in the trust-building process in Lithuania and Latvia is the e-banking system while in Estonia, the website. The research has the following limitations: The online survey of individual customers (however, internet banking relates to internet users, so this limitation is not essential); the analysis of only the positively affecting criteria of the trust-building process; only experts assessed the subfactors.