Build it – Will They Come?: A Study of the Adoption of Mobile Financial Services by Low Income Clients in South Africa

Globally, only a sixth of the approximately 3 billion impoverished people of working age currently have access to formal financial services, which translates to 17% coverage of the market, leaving 83% under-served. The growth of mobile telephony has been rapid and has extended access well beyond already connected customers in developing countries. This rapid growth offers a new low-cost alternative for financial institutions to make a profit while dealing with small money transfers and payments. Consumers also benefit because they no longer need time and financial resources to travel to distant banks. The successful deployment of financial services via mobile phones has shown willingness from financial service providers to develop and provide such products. However, there are major perceived and real obstacles in the willingness of consumers to adopt these products. Therefore, a need exists to understand customers’ reasons behind adopting these services. In this paper, the author proposes a model that provides a framework to empirically test the attitudes of customers toward mobile financial services via a control group conducted in 2008 using Luarn and Lin’s (2005) mobile banking adoption model.