Acceptability of neobank in Vietnam’s banking sector

Abstract

The outbreak of mobile technology and the change in consumer trends towards financial services products facilitated a new type of banking model named Neobank, which has gained in popularity since 2010 in the world. Neobank is considered digital-only banking because it does not have dealing rooms. The bank's operations are completely online instead of going to transaction points. Neobank provides its customers with an experience through a mobile application, so it is also known as pure digital banking Neobanks have increased in number and size, and are becoming more and more popular in all regions of the world (144 Neobanks appeared in 2019 and 2020), and have experienced excessive growth, especially during the Covid Pandemic, when it is not feasible to go to the bank to make regular transactions. However, in Vietnam, we have never seen a genuinely digital banking model established and put into use. Therefore, the authors researched this topic to analyze the factors affecting the acceptability of Neobank for the banking major in Vietnam and propose appropriate orientations for applying Neobank to our country's banking major. This research is carried out according to a quantitative method in order to build the appropriate model and scale for the research objectives. Quantitative research begins with sending out online surveys to collect quantitative data. The data will then be handled on SPSS and Smart PLS software through the implementation of descriptive statistics, measurement model evaluation, and structural model evaluation. After the inspection and analysis, the research results showed that the model has 12 factors that impact in the same direction on the acceptability of Neobank. The partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) and Bootstrapping that were used in part 3 will clearly present the influence level of these factors in descending order of impact: Attitudes affect Behavioral Intent, Easy-to-Use Cognition Affects Useful Cognition,... Based on the impact of these factors, the authors propose specific orientations to boost customer acceptance of true Neobank in Vietnam.