The Mobile phone banking idea was initially born out of the intention to reach the unbanked rural poor. However, there still existed mobile phone money service divide, highly skewed against the rural poor population. This paper was therefore seeking to explore challenges facing mobile phone money services. Qualitative research technique was used. Further, both primary and secondary data was used. The study was conducted in Homa Bay region in Kenya, using ethnography research design. The study established that mobile phone money use and adoption had numerous challenges that had hindered it. Most affected by the challenges were the mobile phone money users and potential users from the rural poor communities. Some of the challenges included lack of national ID cards by potential users, few mobile phone money agents, inadequate cash and e-floats by the agents, awareness and lack of information on how to access and operate certain features in mobile money platform, as well as language barrier. Keywords Mobile Phone Money, Mobile Phone Users, Challenges, Mobile Phone Money Use, Mobile Phone Money Adoption 1. Introduction Mobile money services were introduced by private telecommunication providers in several countries around the world especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America [1]. The concrete design of mobile money services may not be similar; however the general idea was to enable cheap and reliable money transfers between people that have access to a mobile phone. Mobile phone payment however, has been seen only to be a normal practice in a few countries, despite its huge potential. The lack of worldwide dissemination of a service with such a huge potential is an indication that successful cases are not clearly understood, and as a consequence, are not being easily replicated in other parts of the world. A further indication that, lessons are not being learnt from the places where the system has been successfully adopted and benefits are enormously seen. Further, the obstacles to its adoption in most countries could have not been investigated deeply enough to allow implementation strategies to be employed on the basis of reliable business models [2]. These issues therefore need to be clarified, to enhance the potential social and economic impacts of mobile money which can be more effectively measured and this would persuade policy makers to create favourable regulatory environments for enhancing the practice of mobile phone money [2].

DOI: 10.13189/wjcat.2016.040102