Trust

There is no universal definition of trust as it depends on the context and the clients' attitudes and perceptions of the efficient responsiveness of e-Banking. The main challenge for the banking system is to ensure that the information stored on its web servers inspires sufficient trust in the clients during their financial transactions and eliminates the need to enter personal payment data in every transaction (^{Boonsiritomachai & Pitchayadejanant, 2019}), as trust has been listed as one of the primary factors affecting the performance and success of any economic industry, and is decisive in the adoption of e-services, where it directly influences client loyalty toward e-banking and is essential for establishing a long-term relation between clients and suppliers (^{Hong & Cho, 2011}). As pointed out by ^{Carminati et al. (2015)}, it is also true that Internet banking frauds are difficult to detect as there are large, unbalanced data sets (Web logs, transaction records, expenditure profiles). Thus, banking institutions should improve the security features of their e-Banking systems for their clients (^{Anouze & Alamro, 2019}) and monitor fraudulent and atypical transactions to ensure trust in them.

The cultural aspect has an impact on trust in e-Banking. ^{Barker (2018)} considers that it should be considered for future strategies for adopting mobile banking, regardless of the cultural environment, contrary to ^{Yu and Asgarkhani (2015)}, who argue that the influential factors in building trust vary according to consumers and cultures. Consequently, strategies to generate trust have been devised that substantially improve this situation, such as fingerprints, facial scanning, eye recognition, and computer antiviruses (^{Ataya & Ali, 2019}).

Trust is considered the engine of e-Banking. The analysis performed here fills a gap, as it is an antecedent of TAM, hence its importance in spreading meeting points for future work directly affecting its perceived usefulness and ease of use.

Information quality

Technological advances have contributed to the growth of the business environment and the improvement of banking capabilities (^{Boateng et al., 2016}) precisely because they model the clients' intention to adopt services and the evaluation of the quality of a website, which, being multidimensional, involves the comprehensive assessment of the information system (system, services, and information).

After more than two decades of research and practice, it is difficult to find a technique to measure the quality of IT products in their business processes, and like other variables in the IT domain, information quality has been defined as a complex construct in which studies have found it to be one of the main focuses of satisfaction and intention to use mobile banking (^{Sharma & Sharma, 2019}). ^{Ramos et al. (2007)} consider it as accessible, contextual, credible, and understandable. This research will use the measurement of ^{DeLone and McLean (2003)}, who evaluate it as accurate, timely, complete, relevant, and consistent.

Likewise, the quality of information has effects on the intention of continuity of mobile data services and with it to e-Banking; moreover, according to ^{Wang (2016)}, the quality of information is mostly appreciated in the usefulness perceived by regular consumers of technologies, and ^{Ayyash (2017)} found that the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and relevance of information had a positive effect on the client's satisfaction with e-banking services.

Information is an essential part of any technology. With cell phones, the possibilities are vast, from the simplest of finding a bank branch or an ATM to operating transfers and merchant investments. Nevertheless, Redman (1998) also points out some impacts resulting from problems, such as client dissatisfaction, increased operating costs, less effective decision-making, and a reduced ability to produce and execute organizational strategy.

The quality of information has been the subject of years of research within information systems. Today, the aim is to confirm or reject the idea that it is an element that directly and indirectly influences the satisfaction and loyalty of clients when they carry out their financial transactions electronically.

Perceived usefulness

Perceived usefulness is the degree to which a person believes using a particular information system will improve their job performance (^{Davis, 1989}). Nevertheless, it is uselessly perceived as often having a stronger relation with the intended use of the technology or computer system concerning its ease of use (^{Mansou et al., 2016}); its evaluation is, therefore, necessary in order to increase the positive cases of perceived usefulness of the website that count on quality (^{Wang, 2016}).

It has been shown that usability is one of the main reasons clients adopt mobile electronic systems and perform banking transactions, coupled with security, enabling a positive perception of its usefulness (^{Asadi et al., 2017}). Nonetheless, some analyses contradict the positive effect of perceived usefulness, pointing out that it does not affect the intention to use e-Banking and has no explanatory power (^{Muñoz-Leiva et al., 2017}).

Perceived usefulness has been proposed as an intermediation of the TAM between the main independent and dependent variables. Therefore, its theoretical and empirical value will impact any research model in a predictive and not only causal way.

Ease of use

Various studies have found that the market generally accepts cutting-edge technologies when they are easy to use. In e-Banking, clients can easily deposit, access, transfer, and withdraw their money and are assured of continued ownership (^{Asadi et al., 2017}). ^{Anderson and Srinivasan (2003)} suggest that client satisfaction is due to the website's features (ease of use), as it is the main interface with the company. Likewise, with the help of cell phones, financial services should be more easily accessible through a click on the screen, as clients seek banks that provide easily accessible services (^{Amin, 2016}). On the opposite side, it is stated that users will only continuously use mobile banking if it is easy to use (^{Yuan et al., 2016}).

Based on the above, banking transactions on the Internet may seem complicated and intimidating to many clients, so ease of use is a must, as mobile banking clients are highly influenced by the benefits obtained, but more precisely by the ease of use.

Technological evolution has made new technologies easier to operate; nevertheless, not all clients understand and like technology, and there are still technological developments not designed for end users, so this variable is a critical point in the use or non-use of electronic banking.

Usage

Usage is the behavior of employing technology to carry out activities, in this case, financial transactions. The adoption and use of e-Banking by clients vary from one social group to another. It has relevance in the cultural environment in which they operate, where attitude mainly determines the intended use of cell phone applications, discarding utility and risk as factors that directly enhance their use (^{Muñoz-Leiva et al., 2017}). Similarly, perceived ease of use determines information system use in an organization (^{Davis et al., 1989}). Trust is crucial in the behavioral intention to adopt a technology (^{Sharma & Sharma, 2019}).

E-Banking can provide third-party services and other products; in particular, ^{Goi and Ng (2011)} found that young clients who use cell phones have a positive perception of the use of mobile commerce applications, attracted mainly by what ^{Kuo et al. (2009)} call a positive relation between client satisfaction and post-purchase repurchase, i.e., continuous use.

When clients have little or no choice about which IT system to use or how much to use, it is misleading to measure their frequency or amount of use as the dependent variable or to explore predictors of such use (^{Bhattacherjee et al., 2018}). Nevertheless, cell phone use to access banking services was optional in this research. It is seen as a tool to optimize clients' activities. On the other hand, contrary results have also been found, such as that the direct effect of perceived ease of use for continuance intention is not significant (^{Yuan et al., 2016}) and that cell phone use is related to privacy violation and phishing threats.

Several factors influence clients' acceptance and use of e-Banking, including communication and convenience (^{Oruç & Tatar, 2017}), performance expectation, social influence, perceived credibility, and appropriateness of technological tasks (^{Tarhini et al., 2016}), but of particular interest is the fact that there is a strong relation between the intention to use e-banking services and the client's satisfaction with these services (^{Ayyash, 2017}).

An investment in technology that is not used is a bad investment; it is an expense when a greater investment in electronic banking can increase online clients, which increases the bank's revenue (^{Shahabi & Razi, 2019}). For this reason, IT technicians and bank managers must check and publicize the e-Banking tool to operate efficiently by the clients.

Satisfaction

^{DeLone and McLean (2003)} claim that satisfaction is preceded by use in a process sense, but in an informal sense satisfaction is achieved through a positive technological experience. In this study, satisfaction can be defined as the psychological state of well-being that the person perceives when performing financial transactions in e-Banking through a cell phone.

Since banks have invested large sums of money in technological infrastructure, client satisfaction is a critical success factor in e-Banking to generate and maintain their competitive advantage. Accordingly, and in agreement with ^{Tarhini et al. (2016)}, banking institutions should improve the quality of their e-banking system according to clients' suggestions and meet their expectations and needs, even up to an advanced and interactive interface (^{Kim et al., 2009}) for the willingness to use online banking services more frequently. Another important aspect between clients and e-Banking is the employees, who, with a spirit of innovation implemented in the institution, can improve their competence, operational efficiency, and productivity, resulting in a service that offers responsiveness and client satisfaction (^{Yaw & Boachie, 2018}).

Likewise, the security of e-Banking services is paramount for banks to improve client satisfaction and maintain their intention to use them. Satisfaction has been the most widely used dependent variable in the IT area, and fortunately, as it is a complex, multidisciplinary element, and because it deals with perceptions in its analysis, its various aspects allow new contributions to knowledge to be generated, hence its study.

Loyalty

Clients' behavioral loyalty reflects their emotional and psychological state to repurchase and recommend to others (^{Wong & Zhou, 2006}). In Internet banking, ^{Anderson and Srinivasan (2003)} defined e-client loyalty as the tendency to continue to use a specific Web site, visit it frequently, and show high site loyalty with long browsing time. Client loyalty is defined as the tendency of the consumer to visit the website frequently, make regular use of the services, and spread positive word-of-mouth about e-Banking (^{Amin, 2016}).

Clients are changing to e-Banking, so their retention is the goal of every banking institution, as it is the source of its survival. Therefore, client loyalty to the institution is an important part and one of the factors to increase it. To this end, the impact of service quality on customer loyalty has been studied in other electronic contexts (^{Kim et al., 2009}). Still, these are different from e-Banking because of the implications it entails. Therefore, banks must devise adequate marketing schemes tailored to their clients to ensure their loyalty and offer accurate services. Other studies add that they are fast, convenient, reduce transaction costs (^{Johnson et al., 2018}), and offer them additional advantages such as time savings and ease of banking transactions, which can retain more e-Banking users (^{Tam & Oliveira, 2019}), and a good measure is profiling for efficient segmentation of clients to gain their loyalty and satisfaction (^{Dawood et al., 2019}).

Loyalty has been extensively studied in the marketing area. Now, it is necessary to transfer it to information technologies explicitly. Its analysis is useful for generating action plans and relevant decision-making.

After reviewing the literature on the variables involved, the following are the working hypotheses to be tested with the field study and statistical analysis:

Results and discussion

The findings indicate that most clients are female (60%), and the rest are male (40%). Concerning age, as expected, it is young people who use this technology the most: 20 years old or younger (7%), 21 to 30 years old (31%), 31 to 40 years old (26.5%), 41 to 50 years old (26.5%), and 51 years old and older (11%). Regarding the segments gained by the main banks: Santander (48.5%), BBVA (21.1%), Banorte (15.6%), Banamex (5.1%), HSBC (4.6%), and others (5.1%). As for the main transactions conducted, the following stand out: checking cash balances (85%), transfers to other banks (67.5%), transfers to other accounts in the same bank (62.5%), transfers between the client's accounts (54.5%), payments for services (41%), credit card payments (37.5%), cash withdrawals without a card (16%), and investment funds (3.8%).

The inference analysis is performed with SmartPLS 3, which is a second-generation statistical tool suitable for information technology research, carried out in two stages (^{Hair et al., 2019}): a) Measurement Model and b) Structural Model:

a. Measurement model alidation

b. Validation of the structural model

This validation requires two basic indices: a) the standardized path coefficients (β), identified in the PLS graph -nomogram- using the relations linking the constructs in the internal model, and b) the explained variance (R²) that provides an indicator of the predictivity of the independent variables. According to ^{Chin (1998)}, β should reach at least a value of .2 and ideally be above .3, and R² with .67 has a substantial effect, .33 moderate, and .19 weak. Also, the significance (p-value) must be less than .05 (p<.05). For the effect size (f²), ^{Cohen (1988)} points out that it evaluates the level at which an exogenous variable contributes to the explanation of an endogenous variable in terms of R² and the minimum value required is .02.

Table 3 summarizes the eight hypotheses proposed according to the state-of-the-art review and evaluated with the statistical work performed. Likewise, Figure 1 shows the research model estimated and includes the items that make up each variable and their factor loadings, as shown in Table 1.

Source: created by the authors

Figure 1 Research model evaluated 

The data shown in Table 3 detail the approval of the eight hypotheses proposed, all of which have higher values in the relation coefficients (β), t-statistic, and significance (sig./p-value), validating the model with a considerable predictive level and an average of 65.3% of the variance explained by the dependent variables. Similarly, the route with the greatest impact is Perceived Trust-Utility, but with special emphasis on Usage, which directly affects the Satisfaction and Loyalty of e-Banking clients.

The results achieved with SmartPLS were analyzed in the framework of a research model to evaluate e-Banking, and with the premise of an approach focused on the client and not the company, and contrary to other works such as ^{Bhattacherjee et al. (2018)} who studied mandatory IT but believe that models such as TAM have limited applicability in compulsory environments.

The following are the findings for each of the hypotheses, based on the tables above:

For hypothesis 1 (H₁), the clients consider that the information they handle in e-Banking is secure and reliable, which supports the perception of its usefulness through the benefits obtained (useful data), the ease of procedures and time savings, and indirectly, as found by ^{Zhou et al. (2021)} with SEM analysis, in the loyalty of the users. At the same time, with these levels of confidence, H₂ is accepted by finding the software application to be flexible in its operation, easy to use, and the interactions are easy to understand, especially with the convenience of financial transactions (^{Jebarajakirthy & Shankar, 2021}).

As for H₃, information quality in the form of being accurate, up-to-date, timely, relevant, and easy to understand allows clients to perform operations quickly with timely and useful information that creates an environment of saving time and facilitating the process of financial services, and like ^{Wang (2016)}, it has a greater impact on clients who make constant use of the tool. In H₄, information quality is the same way: an IT tool for the client to perceive how easy it is to operate e-Banking to generate flexibility among the various electronic services offered and time savings, and, as found by ^{Villar and Khan (2021)}, that automation processes help to improve these activities.

For H₅, clients conceive that performing financial transactions quickly, with useful information, time savings, and facilitation in their procedures, encourages them to continue using e-Banking to keep track of their operations, interacting virtually with their bank so that they will continue with its constant use. This situation is similar to that studied by ^{Anouze and Alamro (2019)}, who conducted their work with SPSS-AMOS, and ^{George (2018)}, who analyzed TAM; nevertheless, for this correspondence, ^{Muñoz-Leiva et al. (2017)} did not find a strong relation, but rather a very weak one; it is necessary to determine the cultural influence of the country. Likewise, it is the lowest correspondence (this requires further study). The use is appreciated in H_6, which is reflected in the fact that the client considers the electronic banking application as easy to use, flexible, easy to navigate, and with clear and understandable interactions, similar to what was obtained by ^{Mansou et al. (2016)} in their factor analysis. Nevertheless, non-significant relations have been found by ^{Ramos et al. (2007)} and ^{Boateng et al. (2016)}.

Continuing with the importance of usage, it is necessary to point out that this is the variable with the greatest explained variance concerning its dependent variables (satisfaction and loyalty), thus confirming its importance for information technologies and, on this occasion, for the harmonious development of e-Banking. H₇ is the most influential, with a path coefficient of .816 and an explained variance in satisfaction of .666, which coincides with the work of ^{Goi and Ng (2011)}. In other words, the constant use of the application creates in the clients an awareness of emotional well-being that the banking service provides them by meeting their real needs, preferring it before going to a bank branch, and general satisfaction; a similar case occurs with loyalty (H₈), since the user, by making constant use of the facility, will use this technology repeatedly, so both (company/customer) benefit, an idea shared by ^{Anderson and Srinivasan (2003)}.

Taking into account the above descriptions, some of the practical implications and recommendations to strengthen what was found in the analysis of the model and serve as strategies to follow stand out: ensure the integral quality of e-Banking, assuring reliability and privacy, add new mobile banking functions, carry out sensitivity campaigns, provide services with precision, minimize risks, provide high speed in the processes, establish a marketing plan (benefits, advantages through traditional media or current social networks), develop a user manual and above all, provide high security with fingerprint management, complex passwords, facial, voice, and eye recognition, and antivirus software.