ONLINE PAYMENT OPTIONS AND CONSUMER TRUST: DETERMINANTS OF E-COMMERCE IN AFRICA

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of online payment options and consumer trust on the awareness and perception of e-commerce in Africa. A five-construct model was developed and empirically tested utilizing the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique to probe answers for the variables under study. 760 professionals and college students who reside in Somalia responded to our online questionnaire, then 744 clean responses were selected after removing uncompleted answers. The study results determined that the availability of locally popular payment options such as mobile payment in Africa affects the level of awareness and public perception towards e-commerce. Moreover, the current global online payment options overlook the local technologies popular in Africa. Also, consumer trust was found to be a good determinant of the awareness and perception of e-commerce in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). This paper finds that including more payment options would make a difference in Africa. It also shows that low consumer trust could be solved if consumers are given assurances for their online financial transactions. This paper contributes to the existing literature proving that various online payment options and consumer trust can be strong determinants of e-commerce, even in LDCs such as Somalia. Also, it added a new value to the current understanding of the impact of both awareness and perception of e-commerce on the propensity for online shopping by finding contradictory results in our research context.