Assessment of the Practice of Digital Disbursement Financial System in Managing Student’s Loans among Higher Learning Institutions in Northen Zone Tanzania

Abstract

Digital disbursements is a relatively payment system that allows users to send funds from person to person using only mobile phone number which also used by Higher Education Student Loan Board (HESLB) to manage loans among higher learning institutions’ students. This paper as aimed at assessing the practice of digital disbursement financial system in managing students’ loans among higher learning institutions in the Northern Zone of Tanzania.The study applied descriptive research design. A questionnaire was distributed to business experts of Mwenge Catholic University to check on the content validity. To ensure data reliability, a Cronbach’s alpha as a measure of internal consistency was used. The sample size of the study included 400 respondents where questionnaire and documentary review were used as data collection tools. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse and present the quantitative data with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). This study found that the use of mobiles and connectivity,availability of financial and digital infrastructure, convenient and secure banking service with lower fees,offering faster service, and availability of internetdetermined the practice of digital disbursement financial system in managing students’ loans. The study concluded that digital disbursement financial system enables peopleaccessing basic digital services for their daily lives such as paying school fees, payment of utility bills and purchase of airtime. This is made in transmission of the payment message which finally can be transmitted in funds. The study recommended that, there should be reliable internet connectivity to ensuredigital disbursement financialservices which depends on telecommunications infrastructure and internet to allow connectivity to access digital financial service.