Abstract: The rapid development of Internet finance has caused an indisputable impact on the banking industry. The best way for banks to respond to the impact of the Internet finance is self-innovation. Internet finance has both the negative impact of the squeezing effect (competition effect) and the positive impact of the forcing effect (technology spillover effect) on commercial banks’ innovation. The study of the relationship between the two and the results of their joint actions are significant for the development of banks’ innovation in the Internet financial environment. Here the second term of the agent variable of Internet finance was introduced to build a nonlinear model to study the impact of Internet finance on banks’ innovation ability from three aspects: large-scale state-owned banks, joint-stock banks, and city commercial banks. The empirical study used the data from 2011 to 2017, employing both static and dynamic panel data methods. It was found that the impact of Internet finance on the index of bank innovation ability-the non-interest income ratio-has a U-shaped or inverted U-shaped trend relationship in time series, and that the trend relationship between Internet finance and the proportion of non-interest income of different banks is different. Therefore, different types of banks should combine their own backgrounds and advantages to innovate, enhance their own innovation capabilities and intermediate business profitability, and optimize their own service channels and models to cope with the impact of Internet finance.

Key words: Internet finance, banking innovation capability, non-interest income, panel data model