Beyond Communication: Exploring Kenya's Financial Technology through Mobile: A Qualitative Study of Unique Dynamics of Mobile Payment Systems: M-PESA

Abstract

The growth of mobile technology throughout the world is a phenomenon that has been remarkable as all classes of society have access to financial services as people are becoming more aware of the mobile money system. Thus, the ‘unbanked’ lacking financial services have the opportunity to have access through mobile payment services resulting in financial inclusion. However, many mobile payments services are failing among the reasons being security, trust and lack collaborations among many other factors. With this, the primary focus of this qualitative grounded theory study is to fill the gap that exists about unique dynamics of mobile payments outside the banks in the research literature. The goal of this study is to address the gap by investigating and reporting information about the unique dynamics of mobile payments outside the banks and to better understand how a successful mobile payment has had an impact on financial technology of a country. Qualitative grounded method was applied to analyze the unique dynamics of mobile payment service- MPESA, that makes the company - Safaricom gain its competitive advantage, the dynamic capabilities that Safaricom holds that makes it achieve a successful mobile payment service- M-PESA and the attributes and benefits that makes it unique over other incumbents. The findings resulted from the development of six themes and sub-theme. In addition, the findings presented factors that make M-PESA a success, among them simplicity of their products, trust, security and collaborations with financial services and international money transfers. The results also resulted in the development of a theoretical framework that describes the factors that contribute to the success of a mobile payment service.