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Southern University College of Business E-Journal

Abstract

Mobile money, which is a mobile-phone-based service, sends and/or receives money across a wide geographical area with just a touch of a mobile-phone button. This particular financial product was initially introduced in Kenya in the early part of 2007. Within the first six months of its introduction in Kenya, more than two million people enrolled for the service, partly because the utility emerged as a handy tool for urban migrants to send money back home to their families who resided in villages. This overwhelming response to the service was mainly because of its convenience, safety, and speed. Now, in Sub-Saharan African region, this particular utility is widely used even by businesses for a variety of financial transactions, e.g., paying money to creditors and receiving money from suppliers, paying utility bills, and paying salaries of employees. This research examines whether female-owned firms use mobile money for financial transactions of their businesses. The paper uses World Bank’s Enterprise Survey Program Data Set from 2013 and 2016 to investigate this question for small and medium-sized businesses because it is the only data set known to have a set of questions on the adoption of mobile money by businesses in the region. The results indicate that female-owned firms are less likely to use mobile money than their male counterparts. These results are potentially of great significance because more than a third of small and medium-sized businesses in the region are owned by females, making them an important element of the economy in the region.

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