Ghana’s Road to Cashless Economy: The E-Zwich Experience

Abstract

In 2008, the Government of Ghana (GoG) through the Bank of Ghana (BoG) and Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement System (GHIPSS) launched a smart card called e-zwich which formed a central part of the government’s plan to move the country towards a cashless economy. Modernization of the cash sector has remained at best in a confused state since it was launched and at worst an embarrassing drawback. In this article, we employ the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and the structural equation model to estimate users' behavioral intentions and actual usage of the cashless system. The structural results show that eleven out of the fourteen hypotheses are statistically significant, while the remaining three are statistically insignificant. The results also indicate that performance efficiency, effort efficiency, and social influence significantly influence the behavioral intentions of people to use the cashless system, and the age and gender of users significantly moderate the three constructs. Behavioral intentions and facilitating conditions are also found to influence actual usage of the cashless system significantly. This study fills the gap in the applicability of the UTAUT model in a central cashless system acceptance and usage. The study also provides empirical evidence on how demographic factors such as age, education, and gender moderate the relationships among the major constructs of the UTAUT model. For the first time, we support the empirical findings on the moderating effect of age in the UTAUT model with established economic theory, the life-cycle theory. We have outlined recommendations in detail on some important considerations needed to achieve smart financial economy in Ghana, and such achievement could be emulated by other countries that are yet to implement a central cashless system.