EFFECTIVENESS OF THE STUDENT’S ELECTRONIC PAYMENT SYSTEM: A CASE STUDY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ZAMBIA

Abstract

The University of Zambia is a Public University which was formed by an Act of Parliament Number 66 and saw its first intake of students in 1965. From inception to 2009 the student made their payments manually and this had challenges on the part of students as they had to stand in long queues. Registration used to take long and students used to face risks of loss of funds in the proThe aim of the study was to examine the effectiveness of the student’s electronic payment system used at the University of Zambia and the challenges associated with it. A descriptive survey was used in the study as it was conducted using questionnaires and interview guide, data was collected from 92 participants from a cross selection of the School of Natural Sciences students that where randomly selected, management and other stakeholders such as Zambia National Commercial Bank and Zambia Education Research Network who were purposively selected.The results revealed that the system was effective though had challenges that needed to be worked on in order for the system to be more effective. The challenges identified from the current student’s electronic payment systems were, failure to update the students account within 48hours (32%), poor internet connectivity (28%) and lack of network accessories and information (26%). The initiatives suggested by participants that the University can put in place are investing in Information Communication Technology (ICT) so as to ensure that all payments are updated and able to handlethe challenges that come with the ecommerce world. The study recommended that the University of Zambia should invest in effective ICT on which the electronic payment system depends on; broaden the scope of the payment system to include more banks as well as non-bank related payment options like mobile banking; the University should request the banks for an electronic interface to reduce physical human interaction. This would increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the system.