This study investigated customers' preferences of payment systems and the influence of demography on the attitude of customers towards e-payment services. Survey responses were received from 558 bank customers. The t-test and the analysis of variance were employed to examine the differences in perception of security, ICT literacy, customer satisfaction, and the use of e-payment services based on customers' age, gender, and the level of education. The findings revealed no significant differences between the male and female customers in the use of e-payment services. However, the male customers had higher ICT skills, yet perceived e-payment services less secured. Moreover, there were no significant differences in satisfaction and e-payment use, though, customers with higher level of education felt less secured using the services. Also, whereas the older customers were more satisfied with e-payment services, the younger customers had more ICT skills and use the services much more. These findings are necessary for formulating strategies for marketing e-payment services.
TopIntroduction
Advancement in information technology facilitates developments in electronic payment (e-payment) systems where goods and services are traded without the use of physical cash (Tee & Ong, 2016). An electronic payment is an electronic or a type of non-cash means of making payments (Morgan, 2013). The current growth in the use of e-payment systems demonstrates its potential to transition the unbanked and poor communities into the mainstream financial services (Eraker, Hector, & Hoofnagle, 2011). This would as a result transform a cash-based economy to a cashless economy. There are two main classifications of payment instruments, namely cash or non-cash. Cash is generally paper-based (physical cash) while non-cash instruments are predominantly performed by electronic means. An economy may be primarily non-cash or cash-based depending on the level at which e-payment services are being used.
In many developing economies trading and settlement activities are still densely cash-based. For example, the ratio of currency outside banks in some selected developed and developing nations shows that Ghana as at the end of 2014 had the highest currency with the public to narrow money ratio of 39.96% as compared with Nigeria (20.77%), Gambia (33.46%), Bulgaria (32.68%) and Romania (33.64%), United Kingdom (4.52%) and Sweden (3.93%) (Bank of Ghana Annual Report, 2014). Adopting e-payment systems have numerous positive impacts on an economy. Unlike traditional cash transactions, e-payments systems simplify making economic transactions, provide quicker access to funds (Oginni et al. 2013) and discourage robbery and other cash related crimes (Armey et al., 2014). On the contrary, cash transactions do not keep documentary evidence of movement of money; can promote bribery and corruption, tax evasion, under invoicing; and have very high risk implications (Zandi & Singh, 2010). Besides, cash transactions require huge cost of printing new notes and destroying mutilated ones. But the developments of the card payment system allow for lowering the costs of money in circulation and thereby lead to significant economic gains (Goczek & Witkowski, 2016).
There has been an increasing deployment of various e-payment services by the banks and the telecommunication service providers; ranging from the use of cards (credit and debit cards), electronic cheque clearing, electronic funds transfer, Internet banking (Jagannathan et al., 2016), to mobile banking (Liébana-cabanillas et al., 2014). Internet banking (e-banking) is an electronic payment platform that allows the users to perform financial transactions through the financial institution's website. Similarly, mobile banking (m-banking) allows smartphone users to perform online banking transactions. In recent years, telecommunication service providers have introduced various innovative e-payment services. These include Airtel money, Tigo funds transfer, MTN money transfer, Vodafone money transfer, and e-zwich. Though these services are available, user acceptability and utilization are of critical importance (Nwankwo & Eze, 2013).