Assessment of mobile money security awareness among Mtn mobile money users in Ghana

Abstract

Mobile money is a process by which mobile phone subscribers use telecommunication networks or platforms to perform banking services at any point in time. Mobile money services enable the subscribers to do banking transactions directly from their mobile phones without physically being in the bank to deposit and receive money, pay bills and transact business. The main objective of the study is to assess a holistic approach to Mobile Money security in Ghana. The study was a descriptive exploratory which adopted a quantitative approach and was conducted in Patasi which is a suburb of the Kwadaso Municipality in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. Deliberate convenient sampling was employed by selecting some MTN Mobile Money contact centres in the study area where a sample of 150 respondents was obtained. Data collection was done online using a questionnaire designed in Google form. The link to the questionnaire was sent to respondents via e-mail and on various social media platforms for them to complete it. The study revealed that 98.7% of the people mostly operate MTN mobile money and 98.0% of the respondents preferred MTN mobile money services to ATM and e-ZWICH services. The study also revealed that some of the measures currently put in place to enhance mobile money security include verifying the true identity of the receiver, avoiding sharing of mobile money PINs. Finally, the study revealed that awareness and avoidance of unsolicited messages (scams), checking the authenticity of payment apps before using them, among others can enhance mobile money security. The study, therefore, concludes among others that MTN mobile money service is easy to use and subscribers use the services for both domestic and international money transfers. The study recommends among others that the mobile money service providers, in this case, MTN must set up password expiring time for mobile money subscribers to change their passwords quarterly and authenticate it through answering questions regarding personal identification.