CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES OF ADOPTION OF MOBILE PAYMENT IN PRODUCT SAFETY NET PROGRAM (PSNP) HOUSEHOLDS: IN THE CASE OF BOSAT WOREDA, OROMIA NATIONAL REGIONAL STATE, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

In the contemporary financial system, e-payment is playing a crucial role by reducing the cost of transaction and enhances the number of transaction with less time. Though the incidence of e-payment is very low in Ethiopia, particularly in rural areas, the government gives emphasis to improve the country’s financial inclusion status through expanding new technologies, including e-payment. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the benefit of adoption of mobile payment in PSNP households in terms of timeliness, convenience, cost-effectiveness, client preference and its challenges. Qualitative data was collected from PSNP households in Boset Woreda of Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia with open and closed ended questioners. The collected data was analyzed using 23.0 version of SPSS. The findings indicated that 78.2% of the respondents found mobile payment timely. Further in terms of convenience, 60.6% of the respondents responded that mobile payment enabled them to access payment any time they want. Moreover, by introduction of mobile payment households were able to reduce the cost of transportation by half (i.e. on average from 42.5 to 19 birr). Hence making mobile payment the ultimate preference of households. To scale up this pilot the government should provide a method which has offline functionality to solve the network problem, issue an interest payment saving account to solve the problem of financial inclusion, provide intensive technical and financial literacy to beneficiaries ,strength better monitoring system in place to manage implementation of mobile payment and the challenges and to consider /invite engagement of other mobile money service providers in addition to M-Birr to improve the service quality .