with clearing centers or stock markets. While the bank transfer system in Europe is nationally 

standardized, in the US it is more difficult to transfer money online from a customer's account to 

another account which is not at the same bank or at least certified by it. In terms of online 

banking and brokerage services, German banks can hardly learn from best practice cases in the 

US, but they may learn more from the better performing banks in Denmark. 

FIGURE 25  Use of Online Sales and Procurement in the Finance Sector

100

90

80

USA

70

Denmark

60

50

Germany

40

30

France

20

1010

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Percent use of online sales

Source: CRITO Global E Commerce Survey, 2002; results are weighted by total number of establishments in banking/finance 

sector by size of firm.

The reasons for implementing e commerce technologies also vary among the surveyed countries, 

depending on the time lag in innovation diffusion behavior in each country, as well as on the 

different drivers and inhibitors, which are also closely related to national tradition and mentality. 

Figure 26 depicts the resulting drivers of e commerce, using a five point scale, where 1 

corresponds to  not a factor at all  and 5 to  a very significant factor.  While the demand of 

customers may be identified as an important driver in most countries, especially Denmark, the 

usage of online banking does not seem as widespread in France on the customer side. The same 

holds true for online competition with major competitors. While in the US, the adoption of e 

commerce is strongly driven by competition issues, in Denmark and again in France this factor 

seems to be less important in the banking sector.  

One of the less important drivers of e commerce, for economic reasons, is the necessity to be 

integrated in Internet based electronic supply chains. Due to the low degree of vertical 

fragmentation in general, banks develop, create and distribute their products themselves needs 

of integrating suppliers are not as important as, for example, in the manufacturing industry. But 

again, Denmark is on the forefront and ranks the highest in this field, which may indicate the 

beginning process of using pre configured and standardized products and services to reduce 

costs, as described in the introduction as one of the most important management tasks at the 

moment. The cost issue or, vice versa, the return on investment orientation is therefore an 

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