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Differentiating Adopters and Non-adopters of Smart Cards: Comparative Analysis of Public, Private and Foreign Sector Banks in India

Progressive development in the field of information technology (IT) has brought in remarkable changes in the products as well as methods of payment and settlement system in the banking sector. In India, various types of payment systems are functioning apart from the traditional payment systems where the instruments are physically exchanged and settled manually. Smart cards are a new form of retail payment instrument, installed to facilitate retail transactions through electronic means. In 1999, the Reserve Bank of India issued guidelines to the banks regarding introduction and usage of smart cards. Smart cards are currently being issued by several banks in India which have tied up with Financial Information Network and Operations Ltd. (FINO). The IDBI bank has introduced its smart card called MoneySmart; Corporation Bank has issued CorpSmart; and Bank of India has issued its e-purse cards. PNB, SBI, ABN Amro, ICICI Bank, Bank of Baroda and some other banks have also launched smart card-based banking solutions (Kaur & Kaur, 2008). The main objective of this study is to identify the factors that may vary between the adopters and the non-adopters of smart cards in Indian banks. Banks that have adopted the cards may have different characteristics from those that have not yet adopted the cards. In other words, with the exploration of various characteristics of the banks, the study tries to differentiate between the adopter and non-adopter categories of the banks regarding smart cards with respect to their profitability, size, competitive advantage, efficiency, asset quality, financing pattern, diversification, cost of operations, etc. The empirical results evidently reveal that the banks providing smart cards differ in their characteristics from that of the banks that have not yet adopted it. It shows that the banks that adopted smart cards are larger in size, more efficient, pay lesser wages, and have more industry advantage and thus, in terms of some characteristics, outperform the non-adopter banks.