# Evaluating the Perceived Quality of Mobile Banking Applications in Croatia: An Empirical Study
## 1 Introduction  
Mobile banking, in the form we know it today, has been around for some time now. Over a decade ago, it was mostly performed through Short Message Service (SMS), which was sufficient at that time. Recent advances in the design of web and mobile applications allowed financial institutions to develop more flexible, secure, and usable solutions. Most people nowadays are consuming banking services through mobile applications on theirsmartphones or tablets. The increased use of smartphones has grown the demand for mobile banking applications, prompting their providers to offer new and improved sets of services and features [1]. As a result, the need for face-to-face interactions between bank staff and customers has decreased [2]. Even though new and more convenient banking services are being implemented, banks often underestimate the hedonic factors when developing mobile applications [3]. Customer trust, as an important characteristic of the modern world financial system, is also often overlooked by banks. From dense metropolitan areas to remote, rural areas, mobile banking applications and their services are used in many parts of the world. Especially useful for those without access to local financial institutions, mobile banking provides elegant solutions for various services, such as accessing bank account information, account balance/transaction history overview, committing transactions, making investments, or contacting customer support when banking problems occur. When compared to computer-based internet banking, mobile banking offers benefits such as true freedom from time and place and efficient execution of financial transactions [4]. Customers enjoy fast and convenient services whilst banks, as their providers, gain customer loyalty with the added advantage of reduced costs [5]. However, in many developing countries, mobile banking is not widely used because of different technical limitations, such as smartphone inaccessibility and poor infrastructure [1; 6]. Various cognitive obstacles, such as tradition, image, and risk barriers, influence customers' behavior when adopting mobile banking [7]. Bank clients in Croatia believe that mobile banking is safer than internet banking [8]. Several arguments support this statement, the first one being that mobile banking application is usually used on only one specific device where the phone number containing a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card is registered to the bank account. On the contrary, internet banking can be used on any device. Although mobile banking applications commonly have implemented biometric or two-factor authentication (2 FA) methods that provide an extra layer of protection, mobile banking suffers from various types of attacks that are possible on its infrastructure [9]. Examination of quality enables banks to develop more convenient, efficient, and safer mobile banking applications as well as to improve and enhance the set of services they provide. The recent COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on mobile banking adoption. Customers have formed new habits, and the use of mobile banking applications has become a daily activity. A study conducted by [PERSON] et al. [10] revealed that the COVID-19 threat had a moderating influence on the relationship between customers' intention to use and actual use of mobile banking applications. According to Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) [11], in early April 2020, new mobile banking registrations jumped approximately 200% over the daily average in March 2020. In addition, on 13 April 2020, logins were 85% higher than the daily average in March 2020 [11]. As of May 2021, most customers in the United States used mobile banking applications to check their account balances [12].