World Journal of Computer Application and Technology 4(1): 8-14, 2016 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/wjcat.2016.040102 Challenges Facing the Use and Adoption of Mobile Phone Money Services Odoyo Collins Otieno 1,* , Samuel Liyala 1 , Benson Charles Odongo 2 , Silvance Abeka 1 1 School of Informatics and Innovative Systems, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, Kenya 2 Department of Special Needs Education and Early Childhood Development, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, Kenya Copyright©2016 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract The Mobile phone banking idea was initially born out of the intention to reach the unbanked rural poor. However, there still existed mobile phone money service divide, highly skewed against the rural poor population. This paper was therefore seeking to explore challenges facing mobile phone money services. Qualitative research technique was used. Further, both primary and secondary data was used. The study was conducted in Homa Bay region in Kenya, using ethnography research design. The study established that mobile phone money use and adoption had numerous challenges that had hindered it. Most affected by the challenges were the mobile phone money users and potential users from the rural poor communities. Some of the challenges included lack of national ID cards by potential users, few mobile phone money agents, inadequate cash and e-floats by the agents, awareness and lack of information on how to access and operate certain features in mobile money platform, as well as language barrier. Keywords Mobile Phone Money, Mobile Phone Users, Challenges, Mobile Phone Money Use, Mobile Phone Money Adoption 1. Introduction Mobile money services were introduced by private telecommunication providers in several countries around the world especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America [1]. The concrete design of mobile money services may not be similar; however the general idea was to enable cheap and reliable money transfers between people that have access to a mobile phone. Mobile phone payment however, has been seen only to be a normal practice in a few countries, despite its huge potential. The lack of worldwide dissemination of a service with such a huge potential is an indication that successful cases are not clearly understood, and as a consequence, are not being easily replicated in other parts of the world. A further indication that, lessons are not being learnt from the places where the system has been successfully adopted and benefits are enormously seen. Further, the obstacles to its adoption in most countries could have not been investigated deeply enough to allow implementation strategies to be employed on the basis of reliable business models [2]. These issues therefore need to be clarified, to enhance the potential social and economic impacts of mobile money which can be more effectively measured and this would persuade policy makers to create favourable regulatory environments for enhancing the practice of mobile phone money [2]. 2. Literature Review A study by Yu [3] enriched current knowledge about what affects individuals to use mobile banking, employed the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to investigate what impacts people to adopt mobile banking. Through sampling 441 respondents, this study empirically established that individual intention to adopt mobile banking was significantly influenced by social influence, perceived financial cost, performance expectancy, and perceived credibility, in their order of influencing strength. The behavior was considerably affected by individual intention and facilitating conditions. As for moderating effects of gender and age, the study discovered that gender significantly moderated the effects of performance expectancy and perceived financial cost on behavioral intention, and the age considerably moderated the effects of facilitating conditions and perceived self-efficacy on actual adoption behavior. The study was however keen on addressing challenges affecting mobile banking alone. This study did not look into the challenges that affect the adoption of mobile phone money services in payment of services, goods as well as shopping. An article by Yankee Group [4] stated that m-commerce is facing many obstacles as an emerging market, particularly in