| dc.description.abstract | There has been a general increase in the usage of mobile phones in developed world countries and
developing countries. The most significant trend however is the value added services of mobile
telephony services such as mobile payment, mobile commerce, and mobile finance. Every player in
the market is trying to express innovative moves in order that they are always ahead in their
respective competitive markets. Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are not left behind in
all these. With the advancement in e-commerce platforms and mobile commerce platforms, many
SME are trying to employ user friendly payment systems A lot of studies have been done with
regards to adoption of M-Pesa by individuals and merchants but very few of such studies have
focused on SMEs, however, with these studies, we were able to identify various theories that have
been used in formulating reasons or motivations towards these technological adoptions. Such
theories include Technology Acceptance Theory (TAM), Innovation Diffusion theory (ID),
Technology Organization and Environment theory (TOE) amongst others. In our study, we
employed TOE to identify factors that motivate SME to adopt mobile payment methods in their
business processes and e-commerce platforms. Our research design was cross-sectional survey
design to enable us make generalizations and methodology was that of Case Study in order that we
propose and validate any new theory of Technology adoption that may emerge. Adoption and
Acceptance are terms that have been used interchangeably to mean one and the same thing in many
literature. Our study also applied the two terms interchangeably within the context of Technology
Acceptance to mean the same thing. The study sampled 317 SMEs from three strata Hotels and
restaurants, Tours and travel and Supermarkets which have 1,584 registered SMEs. With a response
rate of 73%, a justified analysis of the 232 responses received was done to test the hypotheses under
TOE theory. The results of this study revealed that a majority of SMEs in Kenya are willing to invest
in personnel and technology in order to provide convenient mobile payment options to clients
irrespective of the SME annual revenue, number of employees, nature of business and years of
operation. Further Structured Equation Model (SEM) analysis showed a significant and positive
relationship between all indicators adopted for data collection and the three factors (latent variables),
Technology, Organization and Environment that affect adoption of mobile payment systems by
SMEs. We recommend further studies on this subject to focus on mixed of Technology Diffusion
and TOE to find out how constructs derived from the two models would generate the concept of
mobile payment technology adoption. | en_US |
