Factors affecting incomes of mobile money agent’s case study of Kabwohe and Itendero Towns

Abstract

The major objective of this study is to investigate the factors that affect incomes of mobile money agents in Kabwohe and Itendero towns. The assessment was done on the characteristics of the agents that is gender, age, education status, marital status, number of transactions per day, introduction of 10% withholding tax on commissions to mobile money agents, ownership status of the business using primary data collected from 96 agents in Kabwohe and Itendero towns. The analysis was made at three different levels that is univariate level using frequencies and summary statistics, then at bivariate level using Pearson correlation and ANOVA and then the multiple linear regression. In the results the majority were female aged between 21 and 30 with highest level of education as secondary and with most of them single. The average number of transactions performed by agents per day is 47.92 transactions and averageincome earned by the agents per month is 327760.4UGX. Analysis at bivariate and multivariate level was done at 95% level of confidence At bivariate level, the research shows that there is a significant relation in age of the respondent, ownership status of the business and number of transactions with income earned by the mobile money agent (p<0.05), while gender, education level, marital status and introduction of withholding tax on commissions have no significant relationship with income (p>0.05). In the multivariate analysis income of the agents was significantly associated with number of transactions per day (p<0.05). In particular income was high among females and those who were owners of the mobile money businesses and it increased with the increase in number of daily transactions. Age and ownership status had an insignificant association with income earned by agents (p>0.05). In conclusion, only one hypothesis was rejected and this implies that there is a positive relationship between income of the agent and number of transactions per day. The study recommends that commission per transactions should be increased in order to increase incomes since it may not be easy to increase number of transactions per day.