Home banking usage in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented changes to everyday life and behavioural trends, one of them being the accelerated adoption of various technologies. The thesis analysis how the imposed measures and fear of contracting the virus affected home banking usage in Italy, a country known for its reluctance to access banking services online in pre-pandemic times. The Bank of Italy Special Survey of Italian Households and The Survey on Household Income and Wealth are used to quantify the increase in home banking usage and investigate the users' socio-demographic and economic features. We find that the pandemic hastened the adoption of home banking; in addition to the increase of the users who naturally adopt technologies through time, part of the population used it for the first time precisely because of pandemic-related reasons. After running probit regressions, consistently with pre-existing literature, we find the digital divide persisted during the pandemic outbreak as higher education and income, as well as younger age, increased home banking usage more than the control group. Meanwhile, being from the South of Italy or the Islands lowered the probability of accessing banking services remotely. In addition, general internet use, owning a credit or debit card, and higher financial knowledge are positive and strong predictors.