Examining the Impact and Implications of Mobile Water Payments for Water Bill Collection by Mwauwasa.

Abstract

Various institutions in Tanzania are increasingly arraying the use of M-Payments such as Tigo Pesa, M-Pesa and Airtel Money to enrich the quality of their service provision and volume of revenue. This paper aims to examine the impact and implications of mobile water payments (MWPs) for water bill collection by Mwauwasa. The study focused in testing three variables namely; MWPs adoption rate by Mwauwasa customers, benefits of MWPs for water services and challenges facing MWPs for water services. Both qualitative and quantitative analytical techniques were used to collect data from a purposively selected sample of 75 Mwauwasa officials and 100 water bill payers. The trend of M-Pesa adoption has been increasing though at a lower pace and revenue collection efficiency has increased too, but still over 60% of Mwauwasa customers are paying through cash where among the challenges that hinders them being inefficiency of the M-Pesa payment system. The study recommends that Mwauwasa should focus on delivering quality M-Pesa system that meets the needs of her clients and more sensitization should be done about usage of M-Pesa to customers and Mwauwasa should fully adopt a cashless system of payment as it is the best way forward to achieve efficiency.