Mobile Money Card: A digital wallet for students in boarding schools in Uganda

Abstract

In today’s fast-moving lifestyle, people need to access more convenient and secure financial services to make their life more comfortable. To achieve this goal, Ugandans have turned to using mobile money services more than any other financial services such as banking. Mobile money services refers to financial services provided by a telephone company to people enabling them to conduct electronic financial transactions using an account linked to a mobile phone. As of today, MTN Mobile Money and Airtel Money are the dominant players in the industry. Although mobile money services have been adopted by the majority of people, over 30 millions registered mobile money customers in Uganda (Uganda Bureau Of Statistics, 2020), there is one population segment that has not yet been able to access these financial services, that is the student population, especially for those under the age of 18 and those attending boarding school. We believe that youth financial inclusion is a key point in the development of a country, that is why we have proposed a study for the development of an information system that will enable boarding school students to have access to these electronic financial services. This study investigates how a digital wallet with a high level of usability can be designed to solve the problem. The research process consisted of a literature study for gathering all the requirements for such a system and the development of a prototype, whose usability has been evaluated, as well as the willingness of people to adopt this innovation using questionnaire survey method. Results are presented in this report and conclusions are drawn. The study shows most of the respondents are willing to adopt this product. Consequently, this report is the story of that innovative solution. In the first part of the report, we try to explain accurately the current state of affairs, present the literature we studied, and provide an insight to the research methodology employed. In the second part, we present our proposed solution, give an analysis of its requirements, provide design representations of the system, and explain our process of implementing the system. Finally, we present our results and evaluate the results.