M-PESA an agent-assisted, mobile phone-based, person-to-person payment and money transfer system, was launched in Kenya on March 6, 2007. This study is the first of its kind to explore the economic effects of M-PESA in Kenya at the community level.
The findings from the first stage of the study indicate that M-PESA affects the economic outcomes of community members, both users and non-users of M-PESA, through direct and externality effects, and identify 11 economic effects within the broad categories of local economic expansion, security, capital accumulation and business environment after 2.5 years of M-PESA’s use in these communities. The research also shows that effects were not visible in all the study communities and among all the population segments within the communities; they tended to be influenced by gender and geographic location of the communities.
Also, the effects were not always perceived as mutually exclusive, but as interwoven with each other to produce overall community effects.
M-PESA an agent-assisted, mobile phone-based, person-to-person payment and money transfer system, was launched in Kenya on March 6, 2007. This study is the first of its kind to explore the economic effects of M-PESA in Kenya at the community level.
The findings from the first stage of the study indicate that M-PESA affects the economic outcomes of community members, both users and non-users of M-PESA, through direct and externality effects, and identify 11 economic effects within the broad categories of local economic expansion, security, capital accumulation and business environment after 2.5 years of M-PESA’s use in these communities. The research also shows that effects were not visible in all the study communities and among all the population segments within the communities; they tended to be influenced by gender and geographic location of the communities.
Also, the effects were not always perceived as mutually exclusive, but as interwoven with each other to produce overall community effects.
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