Mobile Money Services for Socio Economic Development

In the Digital era, the mobile phone seems to be the ubiquitous companion since it is used to replace many artefacts of the daily life (watch, light, camera, diary/organizer…etc). Even money has been digitalized to be operated over a basic phone handset, thereby opening the opportunity to underprivileged social classes to benefit from financial services they could not access before. Therefore the ‘Mobile Money’ appears to be seen as contributor to financial inclusion of a large segment of unbanked people and to some extent to their socio-economic development. This academic paper, based on the study conducted by the author in Côte d’Ivoire, is aligned on previous research demonstrating that some factors hamper the deep adoption and the effective use of ‘Mobile Money Services’ despite a perceive good acceptance by population in developing countries. This research, based on empirical methods of data collection and a scrutiny analysis of findings, draws the following conclusion on the factors that could impact the deep adoption of mobile money services and its active use as means of socio-economic development in Africa.