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The global rate of people owning smartphones is growing daily. This growing smartphone ownership rate is irrespective of whether they are from first, second or third world countries. For instance, in first-world countries like the United States of America (USA), it has been reported that 46% of Americans cannot live without Smartphone (Smith, 2015); meanwhile, in another first-world country, South Korea, the rate people owning Smartphone is 88% (Poushter, 2016). In a second-world country like India, the population of Smartphone holders was more than 6 million in 2010 (Kumar, 2011). In third-world countries like Tanzania, the rate is 74.7% of the student population (Kifumbu, 2018). Global statistics indicate that 43% of people possess smartphones (Poushter, 2016). This number was expected to reach 65% by the end of 2020, equivalent to three billion people who own smartphones (Sobti, 2019). This shows that the number of people owning Smartphone smartphones is high and keeps growing regardless of geographical areas and financial status.
Apart from this number of people who increasingly have smartphones, there is a massive amount of payments conducted through these digital devices in various forms, for instance, m-mobile and m-banking (Sobti, 2019). Digital payment is emerging as an important market in economic growth. In 2015, this digital payment contributed about 8% of global retail payments, and that Figure was expected to grow to 24% by 2020 (Sobti, 2019). Therefore this rate of money transactions (payments) attracts more studies in this digital market (mobile payment) with consideration that 82% of people are still transacting in cash in developing countries (Sokolowska, 2015).
The developers of communication and payment technologies are closely following this trend. Near Field Communication (NFC) is one of the technologies which enable two devices, such as smartphones and point-of-sale (POS), to communicate with each other within a very short distance (proximity), which is applicable for contactless payment (Shin & Lee, 2014). In the NFC setting, the user is either found NFC in the Smartphone or downloading an NFC app on their Smartphone in which their bank account, credit/debit account, and retail store account are kept (Shin & Lee, 2021). The card with the same details may be created for the user to walk around with. The Industry market reports expected this NFC technology-based mobile payment to grow very fast (eMarket, 2015; Accenture, 2015).
Mobile payment (m-payment), which is regarded as the use of the mobile device to initiate, authorize and confirm an exchange of currency in return for a good and/or service (Shin, 2010; Tobbin & Kuwornu, 2011), started in 1997 evolved through different technologies such as Short Message Service (SMS), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), NFC and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) (Dahlberg., Guo., & Ondrus, 2015; Khalilzadeh, Ozturk, & Bilgihan, 2017). In Tanzania, most Mobile Payment Systems are web-based, SMS based and USSD-based, for instance, Tigo Pesa, Voda Pesa etc. This proximity technology (NFC-Mobile Payment) will enhance and broaden payment options for consumers and merchants; hence an explanation for its slow adoption has to be provided.