The research had two main objectives; these were to find out to what extent the use of mobile money transfer services like M-Pesa and YuCash had changed how microenterprises conducted business e.g., if they were the main media of payments or not, if at all.
The second objective was to find out whether mobile money transfer service had helped microenterprises increase their sales volumes as compared to before they had mobile money transfer service. This was later found to be difficult to measure as none of the respondents had records going that far. The research therefore settled for a simple growth in sales volume as the measure for mobile money transfer helping to increase sales growth.
The data was gathered from microenterprises from 3 locations within Lang'ata constituency, i.e. Madaraka Nairobi West area, the Kibera area and the Karen area. Despite their apparent differences in wealth and locales, they all had some similarities that were considered for their inclusion in this research. All the businesses had less than 10 employees; in fact, most had 3 or 4 employees including the owner. In fact only one had 10. Second criterion is that all of them used the mobile money transfer services as part of their modes of transaction; however, they did not have to include it as an integral part of their payment strategy.
Correlation analysis between the datasets found that the microenterprises did not perceive mobile money transfer as crucial to their business, i.e. they could still operate with or without mobile money transfer. The services also served to complement rather than replace traditional modes of transaction. It also found that the main reason that most of the microenterprises used mobile money transfer because of it's convenience, more than any other reason.
From these findings, the research concluded that most microenterprises were ready to embrace mobile money transfer services as part of the payment media. Indeed, this process was already underway; however, high costs and lack of a service tailored to their needs hindered greater adaptation and relegated this service to the periphery of importance as a payment tool for these businesses.