Empirical Data on Mobile Money Hesitation Factors in Somalia

Abstract

Mobile money is an electronic system of transferring money from person to person. The mobile money service has expanded its coverage all over the world and there is hardly any country that do not practice any form of mobile money transfer. Somalia is one of the countries that embraced mobile money unconditionally as there is lack of traditional financial institutions providing financial services since the collapse of central government in 1991. Somalians accepted mobile money because it has made money transfer easier for them to pay bill and shopping. However, there are hesitation factors that hinder the full scale functioning of the system and makes people hesitate to use mobile money. Currently mobile money users practice very limited mobile money functions such as sending and receiving, withdrawal, top up and internet recharge. Other mobile money functions such as pay tuition fees, payrolls, payments for purchase t, utility payment and saving money into mobile money account are lagging behind. This empirical study explores the inconvenience factors that lead people to hesitate to use mobile money in a large scale. In this study, 650 survey questionnaire were distributed among mobile money users in Somalia. The questionnaires were distributed through online Google form. A total of 375 respondents submitted their responses and all the answers were recorded into SPSS. IBM-SPSS statistics 22 were used to statistically analyses the data. Factor analysis for data validity and scale analysis for data reliability, frequency and descriptive statistics were conducted to analyze the data. The study found that there are numerous mobile money hesitation factors that make Somalian people to hesitate fully practicing the system. These hesitation factors include perceived risk of financial loss, perceived risk of system error, perceived risk of authentication weaknesses, lack of regulation and policy and interoperability between the mobile money service providers. This study concludes that hesitation factors needs to be addressed that will improve the level of mobile money usage into full scale. Among factors that may reduce hesitation factors of the usage of mobile money services in Somalia are high level accuracy of mobile money authentication system, operative interoperability platform, highly effective compensation system and functioning mobile money regulations and policy.