Assessing the impact of mobile money on financial inclusion during Covid-19 in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Author

Mubatanhema, Brendon Tatenda

Title

Assessing the impact of mobile money on financial inclusion during Covid-19 in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Abstract

The study was conducted to assess the impact of mobile money on financial inclusion during Covid-19 in Harare, Zimbabwe. The research was necessitated by the unexpected black-swan event which transformed people’s lives overnight and thus had a bearing on their access to financial services during a time when Zimbabwe was going through the first phase of its National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) program. Due to the characteristics of mobile money, it was expected that this mobile service provider-initiated platform could help people effectively transact as well as send money to each other hence contribute to people’s levels of financial inclusion during this trying time. The research was conducted using descriptive analysis that involved questionnaire surveys as well as secondary quantitative data from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe for the period under study which was analysed through regression analysis to establish the influence of mobile money on financial inclusion. A sample size of 138 respondents was used with 110 participants answering/ returning the questionnaire. Research findings were analysed further and presented using SPSS, bar graphs, tables and pie charts. The significance level of the analysed data was 0.000<0.05 making the model valid as its value was less than 0.05. The study concluded that there was a strong positive relationship between mobile money and financial inclusion during the Covid era in Zimbabwe as people could easily use it to transact, send or receive money as well as pay for basic utilities in the comfort of their homes with the need for entering long queues to collect money or make payments reduced at a time when physical contact and travelling were limited and discouraged. The study recommended that mobile network operators do more to incentivize users so that they can use mobile money as a saving and borrrowing platform especially low-income earners who might not have access to bank accounts whilst lobbying government to improve people’s levels of financial literacy by including it in its curriculums. Finally, more efforts could be concentrated on digital financial services as they have demonstrated that they are the future and can prove to be highly beneficial in times of global crisis.

Date

December 2022

Publisher

BUSE

Keywords

Mobile transactions

Mobile payments

Mobile money

Supervisor

N/A