The Role of e-payment on Productive safety net Program (PSNP) Implementation Performance in Ethiopia (The case of M-birr service in Tigray Region)

Abstract

The study tried to assess the role of electronic payment on the productive safety net program implementation of Ethiopia with a particular reference to Tigray region’s M-birr mobile payment. Government of Ethiopia realized the importance of e-payment towards efficient and effective service delivery in the year 2015. This study therefore aimed at assessing what the role of e-payment affected the program’s performance by in meeting the expected success factors previously set by the program owners. These success factors namely; convenience, timeliness, protection, cost effectiveness, financial inclusion will allow to see the effectiveness of the implementation & measure the customer’s satisfaction on the payment modality of the program. The study covers Tigray Region’s PSNP e-payment program addressing hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries. A causal research design is adopted with both qualitative & quantitative research approach. The target population of this research was program beneficiaries, implementing party informants which is 17,170 HHs and simple random sampling was used to select 376HHs for data collected by means of a questionnaire& an interview with 10 key informants representing different implementing parties. The findings of this study revealed that e-payment has had a very positive effect on the program’s performance; has improved convenience, timeliness, protection, appropriateness & financial inclusion while enhancing clients’ satisfaction but multiple challenges have been faced in the implementation period in attending perfection of the implementation as there is high agent turn over & limited cash holding capacity to meet expected convenience, visibility of pin card exposing clients to potential fraud cases & delays in attendance & payroll preparation to meet timeliness. This study recommends that for e-payment implementation to be effective as expected, stakeholders need to work as a team in achieving timeliness, network accessibility, engaging RuSaCCos in all kebeles to increase convenience & TSP should come up with a potential security mechanism to overcome the pin risk.