Mobile Money Essay

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 Introduction

This chapter aims at presenting a review of existing literature related to mobile money and its effects on transactions among small and medium enterprises. It however, provides the understanding and insight necessary to generate ideas for possible areas of research; identify a number of studies worthy of further evaluation; as well as providing opportunity to expand on the work of others. For the purpose of this study, the first section of the review presents an in depth explanation of what mobile money is and subsequently in the preceding sections discusses the following headings:

2.1 Electronic Payment Systems

Summers (2012) defined payment system as an operational network governed by laws,

Firpo (2009) further argues that mobile money is a monetary value stored electronically on receipt of funds, and which is used for making payment transactions. Based on Firpo’s argument, pre-paid cards such as the E-Zwich, ATM and credit/debits cards, electronic purses such as MTN Mobile Money, Tigo Cash and Airtel Money or web-based services such as MPower Payments and SlydePay in Ghana and global electronic payment services such as PayPal, Skrill, and Payza are some examples of mobile and electronic payment services. As such, mobile money can serve an umbrella term for a number of more specific electronic value products and

For example, electronic payment transactions in the United States exceed cheque payments by a substantial percentage margin (Federal Reserve Financial Services Policy Committee, 2006). According to the study’s report, the United States recorded 44.5 billion dollars in electronic payment transactions against 36.7 billion dollars for cheque payments. An argument that can be raised from the study by the Federal Reserve Financial Services Policy Committee is that consumers in developed and more advanced countries such as the United States are usually comfortable with electronic business transactions which encourage the use of digital media to process business