Thesis (MTech (Entrepreneurship))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2020 / Often effectively excluded by formal financial systems, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries have found in Mobile Money services an efficient and cost effective means of availing themselves of financial services without holding bank accounts. In order to provide meaningful recommendations to the stakeholders of the banking sector of Cameroon, small and medium-sized enterprises, Mobile Money service providers, and relevant state organs, this study was conducted to investigate the influence of Mobile Money services on the financial performance of SMEs in two markets in Douala in Cameroon. A mixed methods research design was employed to conduct the study. The quantitative data was collected through the administration of a survey questionnaire and the qualitative data from one-on-one in-depth interviews. By means of snowball sampling, a sample of 285 SMEs was obtained to respond to the survey questionnaire, while the researcher used purposive sampling to select the owners or managing directors of twelve of the respondents to participate in the interviews. Version 25 of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software was used to analyse the quantitative data, while the qualitative data was subjected to thematic analysis. Correlation and regression analyses yielded that independent variables pertaining to the adoption of Mobile Money services by the respondents to the questionnaire predicted of the order of 73 percent of variance with respect to increased sales turnover. Most of the twelve interviewees perceived that their business operations had improved significantly after they had begun making and receiving payments in the form of Mobile Money transactions. The participants in the study used Mobile Money mainly to receive money, send money, and buy airtime and a significant majority perceived that Mobile Money services were more cost effective than those of banks. Convenience, safety, and accessibility were the attributes of Mobile Money which the participants cited as having provided their principal motivations for electing to register as users of Mobile Money services. It could be concluded that Mobile Money services exerted a significant positive influence on the financial performance of the SMEs of the participants in the study. On the basis of the conclusions which were drawn from the findings, recommendations were made to the owners of SMEs in Douala, the Ministry of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, Social Economy, and Handicrafts and Mobile Money service providers. The findings of the study underscore the role of Mobile Money services as an effective means of increasing financial inclusion and financial performance and could be useful to academics, owners and managers of SMEs, financial institutions in Cameroon and elsewhere, and also relevant policy makers.

Magister Legum - LLM / This paper analyses how the Zimbabwean economic history has led to the perception and attitude of the population towards the financial industry. It has been blighted by extremes to the extent that in 2008 the Zimbabwe economy had one of the highest hyperinflation rate in the world. Pettinger sums up the hyperinflation journey of Zimbabwe as having begun in the 1990s shortly after the disastrous land reform. This is where private farms were grabbed from landowners and re-allocated to mostly peasant farmers who had no technical know-how in farming. It was also a time when the country was involved in an unbudgeted and unsolicited second Congo civil war necessitating that the Government increase salaries to cater for soldiers and other officials assigned to the Congo. Earlier on the government had buckled under pressure from former war liberators (war veterans) and paid out unbudgeted bonuses.

The inexorable rise of mobile money innovation has led to huge changes in consumption and saving decisions for many households across developing economies. With this background, we use the Ghana Socio-economic Panel Survey (GSPS) data to explore the relationship between mobile money usage and household consumption and savings decisions. Firstly, we develop a framework in which mobile money shifts the budget constraint of households through the transaction cost and remittances in a dynamic setting. Secondly, we show through our empirical results that mobile money promotes household consumption, concluding that the payment convenience of mobile money improves household income by reducing transaction costs and enhancing remittance receipt, thereby promoting consumption growth. A heterogeneity analysis showed that households with larger assets, higher income, relatives overseas, residing in high-income regions, and low financial literacy experienced larger facilitating effects of mobile money on consumption than their counterparts. Meanwhile, households with fewer assets, lower income, no relatives abroad, lower financial literacy, and lower-income regions experience a greater facilitating effect of mobile money savings. Regarding consumption structure, mobile money innovation mainly promoted non-recurring household expenditures rather than recurring ones. Further analysis of consumption categories shows that medical care expenses, communication, food, and fuel expenditures are among the most affected household expenditures by mobile money use. In chapter 2; Given that monetary policy works on the interface of financial systems, fintech innovations can lead to an instability of the money demand function which affects the price level or aggregate spending and consequently, inflation. Therefore, mobile money innovation impacts not only household finance and consumption but also has monetary effects, especially on inflation and real growth. We investigated the impact of mobile money innovation on monetary policy; namely the stability of the money demand function, and output gap using panel data from 44 developing countries and the Generalized Method of Moment Technique. First, we show that there is a weak negative association between the trend of mobile money and the income velocity of money. Further analysis found a positive and statistically significant impact of the innovation on the output gap and a negatively significant effect on the money demand function. We conclude that there are countervailing effects where mobile money lowers transaction costs, improves productivity and economic efficiency, and increases output, resulting in a lesser inflationary effect. In Chapter 3; we show although numerous studies have examined the crowding-out effect of housing on portfolio choice via the house price risk channel and the liquidity constraint channel, separate analyses distinguishing risky asset choices and drawing a distinction between committed and non-committed mortgage payment under homeownership types has received less attention. We investigate the heterogeneous impact of homeownership type on risky asset choice using the 2021-2022 Survey of Economics and Household Decision-making. First, we show that homeowners with mortgage debt are less likely to participate in the cryptocurrency market compared to the stock market indicating that the higher risk associated with “speculative assets” likely induced homeowners with mortgage debt to adopt a more cautious approach to selecting their risky portfolio. The debt component separating homeowners becomes even more compelling when the risk level between assets varies significantly larger, and the agents’ incomes are lower than a certain threshold. However, changes in housing market conditions significantly change the temperance exhibited by homeowners towards risky asset selection. We further decomposed the effects across age groups, risk profiles, and income groups. In addition, we examined the crowding-out effect of house prices and liquidity constraints associated with homeownership as compared to renting. The empirical evidence shows that homeowners are less likely to participate in both the stock market and the cryptocurrency market as compared to renters due to house price risk and liquidity constraints associated with homeownership.

Cette thèse étudie les déterminants de l'adoption des services financiers par téléphonie mobile et ses conséquences sur les comportements financiers individuels dans les pays en développement. Elle est composée de trois chapitres/articles auto-référents. Le premier chapitre étudie l'adoption croissante des services financiers par téléphonie mobile dans les pays en développement en distinguant mobile money (utilisation du mobile pour accéder à des services financiers) et mobile banking (services financiers liés à un compte bancaire accessibles par téléphonie mobile) et en confrontant l'Afrique Sub-Saharienne aux autres pays en développement. L'étude montre que le mobile money est plus répandu que le mobile banking dans les pays en développement mais plus encore en Afrique Sub-Saharienne. Les déterminants de son adoption sont liés aux facteurs macroéconomiques, à l'étendue des services financiers et des activités d'intermédiation du secteur bancaire dans chaque pays et surtout de l'ampleur des transferts d'argent des migrants. Le chapitre 2 analyse l'impact de l'adoption du mobile money sur le comportement individuel d'épargne à partir de données d'une enquête de terrain menée au Burkina Faso en 2014. En distinguant l'épargne selon qu'elle est constitué pour des événements prévisibles ou non, les résultats montrent que le mobile money a un impact favorable sur l'épargne lorsqu'elle est destinée à faire face à des événements imprévisibles et plus particulièrement à d'éventuels problèmes de santé. Les résultats plus précis révèlent que ce sont en fait les groupes défavorisés à qui le mobile money permet effectivement de développer cette capacité d'épargne, la sécurité et la possibilité de transferts d'argent dans la sous-région apparaissent comme les principaux facteurs explicatifs. Le chapitre 3 exploite ces données d'enquête en étudiant l'impact de l'adoption du mobile money sur l'utilisation des services financiers traditionnels (formels et informels). L'analyse montre que les utilisateurs du mobile money le privilégient pour effectuer leurs dépôts grâce aux avantages qu'il apporte en termes d'accès, de coût, de liquidité et de confidentialité par rapport aux services financiers traditionnels. Cependant, l'étude révèle que l'utilisation du mobile money renforce l'accès des usagers des services financiers informels et des groupes défavorisés à la fois aux banques et aux caisses d'épargne. / This dissertation investigates determinants of mobile financial technology adoption and its consequences on individual financial behaviors in developing countries. It is structured around three chapters/self-contained papers. The first chapter explores the growing adoption of mobile financial technology in developing countries by distinguishing mobile money (use of a mobile phone to access financial services) from mobile banking (access of banking services using a mobile phone) and setting Sub-Saharan Africa against other developing countries. The results show that mobile money adoption dominates mobile banking in developing countries especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Determinants of its adoption include macroeconomic factors, outreach of financial services, banking sector intermediation activities and especially remittances. The second chapter analyzes the impact of mobile money adoption on individual saving behavior by using individual-level survey data that we designed and conducted in 2014 in Burkina Faso. By distinguishing saving for predictable events from that for unpredictable events, the findings show that mobile money has a positive impact only on saving for unpredictable events especially saving for health emergencies. Precisely, the results show that disadvantaged groups who use mobile money are likely to save for health emergencies, and that safety and the availability of money transfers within the sub-region appear as factors that may explain the use of mobile money to save for health emergencies. The third chapter exploits the same survey data to analyze the impact of mobile money adoption on the usage of traditional (formal and informal) financial services. The results show that mobile money is preferred for deposits over traditional financial services because of the convenience that it provides in terms of relative access, risk, liquidity and privacy. Interestingly, the results reveal that the use of mobile money brings participants in informal deposit mechanisms and disadvantaged groups toward banks and credit unions.

This thesis investigates ICT diffusion in the context of developing countries, morespecifically in the case of Mobile Money in the Asian country Nepal. Mobile Moneyhas recently emerged in Nepal and has the potential to improve the lives of millions.The aim of the thesis was to examine the dominant business models in Nepal and thebarriers and drivers for the future diffusion of Mobile Money in Nepal. This was donethrough a case study consisting of a field study in Nepal and an extensive literaturereview in the field of ICT diffusion and Mobile Money. Interviews with stakeholdersin the Mobile Money business ecosystem, observations and databases fromorganizations such as the World Bank were used as data sources. The results showthat there are both barriers and drivers for Mobile Money and that the attitudes ofinstitutions, in this case the central bank, have a high impact on diffusion. The introduction of a technology into a new context was affirmed to be a complex,multi-dimensional process. However, in the case of Nepal, one of the solutions couldbe to improve institutional attitudes and make the regulations more accommodating. / Detta examensarbete undersöker spridningen av informations- och kommunikationsteknik(ICT) i utvecklingsländer. Fallet som undersöks är ‘Mobile Money’ i Nepal.‘Mobile Money’ har nyligen introducerats i Nepal och har potentialen att förbättralivet för miljontals människor. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka dedominerande affärsmodellerna i Nepal samt vilka drivkrafter och hinder det finns föratt ‘Mobile Money’ ska spridas inom landet. För att möta syftet genomfördes enfältstudie i Nepal tillsammans med en omfattande litteraturstudie inom ICT spridningoch ‘Mobile Money’. Intervjuer med intressenter inom ‘Mobile Money’,observationer samt information från databaser från t.ex. Världsbanken har använtssom datakällor. Resultaten av studien visar att det finns både hinder och drivkrafterför ‘Mobile Money’ i Nepal och att inställningen hos landets institutioner, i detta fallCentralbanken, har en stor påverkan på spridningen. Införandet av teknik i en ny kontext, eller land i detta fall, visade sig vara en komplex,multidimensionell process. En lösning i Nepal skulle dock kunna vara att förbättraden institutionella attityden och göra regleringarna mer tillmötesgående.

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This study investigates whether the use of mobile money affects the savings patterns of individuals that are vulnerable to financial exclusion, that is, the low-income earners, low-educated, women and rural habitants. Studying the case of Kenya, this study uses data from the 2016 FinAccess Household Survey (N=8,665) that was designed to track and measure the drivers, growth and impact of mobile money use in Kenya. Logistic model and the 2SLS IV regression are used as the empirical estimation method for testing the statistical significance of the correlation between mobile money usage and the savings behaviors of the individuals. The results show that users of mobile money are 1.96 more likely to have a savings product than those that do not use mobile money, and that the propensity for users of mobile money to save for emergencies and for future events is 1.44 and 1.27 times higher, respectively, as compared to the non-users. These findings suggest that individuals that use mobile money perceive it as a trustworthy, efficient and reliable store of value especially making savings for future use. This analysis also finds statistically significant evidence suggesting that mobile money use significantly increases the propensity to save for individuals in demographic groups that are more susceptible to the unique challenges that lower accessibility to formal financial services. Therefore, by increasing the probability of individuals in the female, low income, low education and rural groups to save, mobile money fosters financial inclusion which is essential in the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals such as reducing poverty, increasing equality and sustained economic growth among others. In general, this study has specific policy implications for using mobile money as a device for increasing financial inclusion among the ‘unbanked’ population.

Cette thèse de doctorat étudie la façon dont les organisations, en particulier les entreprises sociales, créent et mettent en œuvre des technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC) pour les populations vivant "au bas de la pyramide" (BoP) et comment de tels projets permettent de lutter contre l'exclusion (ICT4D). Ce travail de recherche est basé sur des données recueillies à partir de deux organisations situées en Inde, l'une opérant principalement dans les zones rurales et l'autre dans les milieux urbains. Ces deux organisations ciblent principalement les populations marginalisées, et opèrent dans un marché strictement réglementé. Ces données ont été collecté principalement à partir d'approches qualitatives. comprenant des interviews, et des documents d'archives. Après un chapitre introductif présentant les motivations et spécificités de ce travail, cette thèse est composée de trois articles. Le premier article explique comment les entreprises sociales répondent à la fois à une mission sociale et une mission de profit, en fournissant des services TIC aux populations marginalisées. Cet article explique comment les entreprises sociales utilisent différentes formes de bricolage pour faire face aux défis liés aux ressources disponibles et aux contraintes réglementaires. Le deuxième article examine l'importance des composants d'un modèle d'affaire dans la fourniture de TIC. Cet article suggère que, en plus de la proposition, l'architecture et la finance, le réseau "innofusion" et la valeur de co-création sont deux éléments supplémentaires essentiels à un modèle d'affaire pertinent pour les communautés marginalisées. Le troisième article propose une théorisation du rôle de l'innovation inclusive (une forme d'innovation émergente pour les marchés à faible revenu) pour permettre le développement des communautés marginalisées. Cette approche propose de tenir compte (1) du rôle des institutions financières dans les zones rurales et (2) de la prolifération rapide des TIC pour faciliter l'innovation inclusive, en prenant pour exemple les femmes en milieu rural. Enfin, cette thèse offre plusieurs contributions théoriques et pratiques. Tout d'abord, en mobilisant le concept de bricolage, cette recherche fournit des indications utiles à la compréhension des TIC pour les populations marginalisées, en particulier dans un contexte de ressources limitées et d'environnement restrictif. Le deuxième article propose également une contributions théorique majeure puisqu'il souligne l'importance des composants d'un modèles d'affaire en proposant l'addition de deux nouveaux composants pour l'introduction des TIC au sein des populations marginalisées à savoir le réséau innofusion, et la co-création de valeur. Et le troisième article fournit une analyse précise et détaillée de l'innovation inclusive pour les populations marginalisées. Enfin, cette thèse suggère aux professionnels comment structurer leurs opérations et leurs modèles de revenus pour des populations à faible revenu. De manière générale, cette thèse ouvre la voie pour l'étude des populations marginalisées, en terme de recherche en système d'information, qui a reçu jusqu'alors une attention trop limitée / This dissertation investigates how organizations (specifically social enterprises) create and implement information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) projects for the people at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) and how such initiatives achieve scale. Building upon the case of mobile money in India, it explains how organizations develop ICT4D projects for the BoP, and explores the issues of business models, inclusivity and scaling in such projects. It is based on data collected from two organizations, one with operations mainly in rural areas and the other one in an urban setting. These organizations which primarily target marginalized communities, operate in a strictly regulated market, and face initial resource challenges. The data is collected from multiple sources, including interviews and archival material such as organizational records, annual reports, formal project reports, etc. Following the introductory chapter, the dissertation comprises three related papers. The first explains how social enterprises that have both a social and a profit mission, provide ICT-enabled services to the people at the BoP and achieve scale. It discusses how ICT social enterprises employ different forms of bricolage to cope with resource challenges and regulatory constraints and scale up. The second paper examines the role of business models in providing ICTs to the BoP and discusses the key components of such business models. It proposes that in addition to the previously discussed value proposition, value architecture and value finance components, innofusion network and value co-creation are also crucial components of such business models due to the specific characteristics of the BoP communities. The final paper of this dissertation theorizes the role of inclusive innovation (an emerging form of innovation in low income markets) in enabling development for marginalized communities. Taking into account 1) the role of micro financial institutions in rural areas and 2) the rapid proliferation of mobile technologies, it studies the ways in which micro financial institutions leverage mobile technologies to facilitate inclusive innovation in marginalised communities, specifically those for women. The dissertation offers contributions to theory and practice. First, by investigating bricolage, it provides useful insights into understanding aspects of scaling for ICT social enterprises, particularly in resource constrained and restrictive environments. Second, it discusses the particular importance of business models for the BoP. Given the specificities of BoP communities, I propose five key dimensions of business models that are appropriate for delivering ICTs. Extending this, the third paper also proposes contributions to the emerging field of inclusive innovation and provides a novel way to understand innovation in marginalised communities. The dissertation also provides practitioners (that deal with BoP communities) useful insights into the ways in which they might structure their operations and revenue models and deal with the partners they could engage with to expand and scale. Finally, this dissertation argues for more focus on marginalised communities such as women in rural areas that have received limited attention in IS research

Customers' use of digital banking has reshaped traditional banking, and senior level bank executives must know how to leverage this innovation to improve customer service to increase profitability. Using the technology acceptance model as the conceptual framework, the purpose of this multiple case study was to explore effective digital banking strategies that senior level executives used to improve customer service to increase profitability. The target population for this study included senior-level executives from 3 banks in Mauritius possessing successful development and implementation experience in digital banking strategies to improve customer service. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and organizational documents, which were analyzed in accordance with Yin's 5-phase data analysis process consisting of pattern matching, explanation building, time-series analysis, program logic models, and cross-case synthesis. The use of member checking and methodological triangulation increased the trustworthiness of data interpretations. Three themes emerged from the analysis of data: use of mobile strategies to migrate customers to digital banking, challenges to migrate customers to digital banking, and digital banking innovation. The implications of this study for positive social change include improving convenience to customers; promoting green banking; and providing easy access to banking to the poor, those with physical disabilities, and those living in remote and rural areas.

In urban and rural Kenya, mobile money, the use of the mobile telephone for banking has become a part of everyday life. People use mobile money to accomplish a variety of functions such as transfer money, save, and pay bills, among other uses. At the national level, the government considers mobile money important for individual and national development. Safaricom’s M-Pesa, the most popular mobile money application has received praise for enabling people in the rural areas to access financial services. This research examines the role of mobile money in the everyday lives of people in rural Kenya, especially ordinary users of M-Pesa and M-Pesa agents that facilitate these services. The findings from this research are based on a three-month period of fieldwork on M-Pesa use and facilitation in Chepkoilel, a rural community in western Kenya. Three questions guided this research: how has M-Pesa fit into people’s existing financial cultures and practices? How do people perceive M-Pesa and the role of the service in facilitating their development or financial mobility? How do M-Pesa agents perceive their role in the mobile money ecosystem? Data were collected using interviewing and observation methods. In this research, I found that M-Pesa users and M-Pesa agents utilized M-Pesa for their individual development. Notably, the M-Pesa agency business model had provided new opportunities for entrepreneurship to rural dwellers. Equally important, the application was fundamental for facilitating local-local and global-local financial flows. The ease of making financial remittances through M-Pesa had saved people the cost of transport to the banking halls in town, and made it easy for participants to forward their chama, or self-help group contributions. However, despite the speed and convenience of transactions brought by M-Pesa, there were widespread perceptions that financial management had been made difficult by the fact that money was now so fluid on M-Pesa, a contrast to the time when people used cash. At the same time, Safaricom’s introduction of M-Shwari, the digital saving platform had provided people with an alternative avenue with which to save and borrow money. Though M-Shwari fostered the privacy of financial transactions, among other perceived advantages, the application was displacing long-held collectivist financial habits by introducing individualistic financial practices. This study has also examined the intermediary work of M-Pesa agents in the mobile money ecosystem. As nodes linking Safaricom and its customers, M-Pesa agents were important actors in the system of exchange and value. Their domestication practices were critical to the integration of M-Pesa within the population. Furthermore, as informediaries, they provided socio-technical information that Safaricom used to improve the service. However, their work was often impeded by increasing cases of digital insecurity, and agents found themselves thrust in the role of the management of safety of M-Pesa transactions despite their limited financial knowledge. Finally, in unexpected ways, M-Pesa agents were engaged in the shaping of M-Pesa to suit the local social, cultural and economic remittance practices of the community they served. In the end, these actions benefited their development, the development of their clients, and Safaricom’s business. However, contrary to the prevailing perception, the study found that M-Pesa’s contribution towards financial inclusion was felt more in the informal economy rather than in the formal economy. I conclude that though M-Pesa was important for people’s development, the low-income population faced digital divide challenges in their attempts to utilize M-Pesa for their development. For instance, the relative high cost of services led to non-adoption of M-Pesa by some demographics. Non-literacy and lack of digital skills were other problems users faced.