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Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Over the past decade, mobile money, as a disruptive financial services innovation, has been widely adopted in Sub-Saharan Africa where the majority of population was financially excluded. Despite the transformative role of mobile money, the macro-level socioeconomic implications have been weakly examined so far. To fill the research gap, this paper explores the theoretical and empirical links between mobile money and socioeconomic development. Drawing on the theory of technology affordances and the emerging mobile money literature, this paper argues that mobile money, when adopted on a massive scale, has the potential to lead to socioeconomic development at the societal level. Results of Difference-in-Differences analysis show that mobile money, when widely adopted, has a positive effect on a country’s economic growth. Additional analysis reveals that the positive effect is found to increase as mobile money spreads into a society over time. This paper contributes to the emerging mobile money literature by documenting the positive relationship between mobile money and socioeconomic development at the societal level.

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