The study sought to investigate the determinants of MoMo fraud perception in C2C e-commerce from a trust perspective. The research model comprises a set of relationships between constructs from empirical studies. The constructs are culture (uncertainty avoidance), perceived reputation of mobile service provider, trust in C2C trader, structural assurance, perceived usefulness, and consumer fraud perception. A quantitative research design was used for the study. The sample consisted of three hundred and eighty-seven (387) respondents. Data were analysed using PLS-SEM (partial least squares structural equation modelling) via SmartPLS 3. Culture (uncertainty avoidance) was found to have a significant negative influence on consumer fraud perception. Perceived reputation of the mobile service provider was found to have an insignificant influence on consumer fraud perception. Trust in C2C trader, structural assurance, and perceived usefulness were found to have a significant positive influence on consumer fraud perception.
TopIntroduction
Mobile phones have created enormous opportunities for financial growth and are anticipated to be a common instrument for conducting a variety of financial activities (Muganyi et al., 2022; Iman, 2018). Mobile phones are equipped with functionalities that surpass traditional telephony needs and inspire the development of value-added mobile services such as mobile money (Khet & Tha, 2022). Serbeh et al., (2022) defined MoMo as the provision of financial services through a mobile device. MoMo is gradually becoming a major means of payment for the unbanked in less developed economies (Wieser et al., 2019). The rapid growth in MoMo usage is partly on account of the increasing penetration and mobile phones, particularly in emerging economies (Aggarwal et al., 2020). MoMo offers its customers a wide range of services, including quick and dependable financial transactions for things like utility payments, cash withdrawals, and cash deposits.
Mobile money has transformed the lives of millions of people globally. The 2021 industry report by GSMA revealed that there were 1.35 billion registered mobile money accounts globally processing $1 trillion in transactions annually (GSMA, 2022). In developing countries, MoMo is integrating the informal and unbanked population into the financial ecosystem (Ekong & Ekong, 2022). MoMo transactions have grown exponentially in Ghana in the last ten years. The total value of mobile money transactions increased from GHS155.8 billion in 2017 to GHS564.2 billion in 2020 (Bank of Ghana, 2020). The relevance of MoMo transactions to the Ghanaian economy cannot be over-emphasized. However, the success of this service has posed a threat to its providers, since unscrupulous individuals continue to use the mobile money service to defraud others (Akomea-Frimpong et al., 2019). Despite the significance of MoMo, mobile money fraud has become an issue of major concern for all stakeholders (Telecommunication Companies, FinTech Firms, MoMo Merchants, End Users, Banks and Regulators) in recent times. MoMo fraud is orchestrated by cyber-criminals, MoMo merchants, staff of service providers on unsuspecting MoMo subscribers usually through social engineering or hack tools (Kilavo et al., 2022). The Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications reported 278 MoMo–related fraud cases in 2015 and 388 cases in 2016 (Akomea-Frimpong et al., 2019). In April 2021, the chamber mentioned that over 4,000 cases of mobile money fraud were under investigation (Brown, 2021). With the emergence of financial service interoperability, users can link all their MoMo wallets to their bank accounts for seamless cash flow, making the threat of MoMo fraud a menace that is negatively impacting user trust in leveraging MoMo for transactions such as Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) e-commerce (Gukurume & Mahiya, 2020).
A typical fraud case in the Ghanaian context which remains unresolved was reported in 2019 showing how sophisticated MoMo fraud criminals are becoming. According to the report by Ayettey (2019)