A dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for Award
of the Master Degree in Science of Accounting and Finance of Mzumbe
University
Mobile financial services (MFS) are a recent rapid development that is taking place
in developing and emerging countries. The penetration of mobile financial services
has been supported by rapid advances in wireless technologies and mobile
penetration in many countries across the globe and a number of developing countries.
Currently there are 150 operating mobile money deployment and over 110 planned to
be deployed worldwide. Its development provides a great opportunity to deliver
financial services to the unbanked who are more than 2.5 billion across the globe.
Mobile financial adoption has been different from one country to another. Evidences
show that countries like Kenya have experienced a faster mobile financial service
adoption than other countries like Tanzania (Keeler, 2012; Horne and Nickerson,
2013). This study investigated the factors influencing the adoption of mobile
financial services in the unbanked population. The study hypothesizes the following
variables to have influence on the adoption of mobile financial service; Perceived
usefulness (PU), Perceived ease of use (PEU), Perceived cost (PC), Perceived trust
(PT), Perceived risk (PR) and Social influence.
The construct validity of the measurement items was established by using
confirmatory factor analysis and the reliability was established by using Cronbach’s
Alpha coefficient. The hypothesis was tested by using multiple regression analysis
and the independent sample t-test was used to investigate if there is a difference in
the adoption between male and female. The sample size used 206 respondents who
were selected from the study area.
The study revealed that perceived usefulness, perceived cost and social influence
were found to have a significant influence on the adoption of mobile financial
services. Perceived ease of use, perceived cost and perceived trust were found to
have an insignificant influence on the adoption of mobile financial services. It was
also revealed that there is no significant difference in the adoption of mobile
financial services between male and female.