Mobile Money Shunned by Unbanked Nigerians

The NOI polls recently has found that mobile money scheme has not been embraced by the unbanked Nigerians.

Mobile money service is targeted at a particular group of people, the rural areas, the unbanked, who all have a mobile phone and believe in the mobile operators enough to keep their SIM cards active.

A number of challenges have been linked to the slow roll out of the process; some of which includes; lack of finance; lack of basic infrastructure; most importantly awareness; few agents, and the exclusion of mobile operators form leading the implementation of the service.

But NOI polls measuring to determine the ratio of mobile money users with bank accounts to those without, responses revealed that all of the respondents (100%) that use Mobile Money services operate a bank account.

“This suggests that the level of awareness and adoption of mobile money services amongst Nigerians without accounts is currently very low and almost non-existent,” NOI Polls said in its report.

The researchers also sought to ascertain the proportion of users that operate their Mobile Money account in connection with their bank accounts: Is your mobile money account operated in connection with your bank account? Responses show that majority (93%) operates their mobile money account in connection with their bank account and 7% operate their mobile money account separately. This further affirms previous findings where the majority indicated banks as their provider.

“Furthermore, to gain insight into the transactions users carry out on mobile money services, respondents were asked: What transactions do you use/have you used it for? The majority of mobile money users use it for “funds transfer” (65%) this is followed by bill payment (54%), money withdrawal (36%) and “payment for purchased goods and services” (25%).

“Analysis based on geopolitical zones revealed that The North-west zone (80%) had more respondents that carry out “funds transfer” on their mobile money account, the South-West zone (93%) accounted for the highest proportion of respondents that use their account for “Bills payment”.

“Also, the South-West zone (54%) had the highest number of respondents that use their account for Money withdrawal while the South-East zone (57%) accounted for the highest proportion of respondents that use their mobile money account for the “Payment for purchased goods and services”.

“Subsequently, in order to gauge the general perception of users of mobile money services, users were asked: To what extent do you agree or disagree to the following statement about Mobile Money services? (a) It is easy to use; (b) Service providers are easily accessible; (c) It is secure; (d) It saves time; (e) It saves cost.

Findings also revealed the majority agree (55%: 25%+30%) that the service is easy to use, on the other hand 38% (9%+29%) are of the opinion that the service is not easy to use.

In reference to the accessibility of service providers, the majority (55%: 21%+34%) agree that service provider are easily accessible.

This finding may be directly linked to the fact that most users operate their mobile money account in connection with their bank account. At the same time, 39% (7%+32%) disagree with the statement,” among other findings.

The opinion poll was conducted on August 5th to 7th 2013. It involved telephone interviews of a random nationwide sample. 1004 randomly selected phone-owning Nigerians aged 18 years and above, representing the six geopolitical zones in the country, were interviewed. With a sample of this size, we can say with 95% confidence that the results obtained are statistically precise – within a range of plus or minus 3%.

NOI Polls Limited is Nigeria’s leading opinion polling and research organisation, which works in technical partnership with the Gallup Organisation (USA), to conduct periodic opinion polls and studies on various socio-economic and political issues in Nigeria.