Consumer payment choices, costs, and risks: Evidence from Zimbabwe

Munacinga Simatele, Edson Mbedzi and Robert Read

Cogent Economics & Finance, 2021, vol. 9, issue 1, 1875564

Abstract: Very little is known about payment choices in the African context and in developing countries in general. Their unique infrastructures and economic nuances suggest that both the availability of instruments and supporting structures in the payment system are different from the general perception. This exploratory study investigates the payment choices in Zimbabwe, a country that claims the existence of a near cashless society. Through a descriptive and logit analysis based on survey data, we find that a strong preference for cash, coupled with cash shortages and inadequate infrastructure for electronic payments, has resulted in a multitiered pricing system, with significant premiums for digital payments. This perverse effect counters the heavily lauded benefits of mobile payments in developing countries. We argue that the demand-side bias in government policies will not effectively counter persistent currency failures and the resultant inflation, both of which have a strong influence on payment choices. We recommend that the government should consider polices that will reduce merchant adoption costs to encourage widespread use of digital payment instruments, such as debit cards.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/23322039.2021.1875564 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:oaefxx:v:9:y:2021:i:1:p:1875564

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/OAEF20

DOI: 10.1080/23322039.2021.1875564

Access Statistics for this article

Cogent Economics & Finance is currently edited by Steve Cook, Caroline Elliott, David McMillan, Duncan Watson and Xibin Zhang

More articles in Cogent Economics & Finance from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().