A study of the perceptions and adoption of Mobile Payment Platforms by entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe's informal economy

Thesis (M.M. (Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Business Administration, 2013.With the growth of developing nations there has also been a growth in the need to recognize entrepreneurship and market-driven solutions as tools that can be used to bring the people in these developing nations out of poverty. If technology is widely adopted and accepted in a society, the long-term impact on that society can be more effective than any other social force. A great example of this phenomenon is the explosive growth of mobile devices technology that has infiltrated every part of the world and in all levels of the economic pyramid as they can play a large and critical role in social transformations in developed and developing economies (Lee et al 2010). Since the introduction of the mobile phone in Zimbabwe in 1996, there are 9,527,520 users of mobile phones. .A mobile banking platform, Eco-Cash, was launched by Econet Wireless, a cellular phone network provider at the end of 2011. This platform was launched in order to take advantage of a large identified gap in the Zimbabwean economy (Makunike 2013). At the end of 2012 there were 270 000 active users and 1.5 million registered users of the Eco-Cash MPP (Kabweza 2012). This study is of the perceptions and adoption of Mobile Payment Platforms (MPP) by informal entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe and employs the use of an adapted version of the Technology Acceptance Model, developed by F. Davis in his doctoral thesis in 1985, as the research framework. The model has been modified by different researchers over the years. Data collection for this study was administered telephonically to the informal entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe and this study only used primary data sources. This data was extracted from the respondents answering the telephonic surveys. This research found that although informal entrepreneurs, who are either personal or business users or non-users of the MPP are positively disposed, in terms of perceived usefulness, perceived cost, perceived support, perceived social influence, overall trust and perceived overall risk, this disposition may not necessarily lead to the increased usage of the MPP by informal entrepreneurs iv in Zimbabwe. However, perceived ease of use proved to be the exception, as the research study showed that the more informal entrepreneurs perceived the MPP to be simple and easy to use, this perception may lead to the increase in the perceptions and adoption of MPP. As this is one of few studies that to look into the adoption of MPP in Zimbabwe, this study serves as the foundation for future research in Zimbabwe that pertains to the adoption of MPP by entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe‟s formal and informal economy