Effect of Cashless Policy Instruments on Small Scale Businesses in Abakaliki Metropolis, Ebonyi State

The focus of this study was to investigate the effect of cashless policy instruments on small scale businesses in Abakaliki metropolis. The specific aims of the researchers were: to find out the effect of POS transactions on small scale businesses in Abakaliki metropolis, to examine the effect of mobile USSD transactions on Small scale businesses in Abakaliki metropolis, and to investigate the effect of online web transactions on small scale businesses in Abakaliki metropolis. The study adopted survey research design with primary data, and employed Likelihood Ratio and percentage analysis to analyze the data. The findings of the study indicated that POS transactions as a cashless policy instrument have significant positive effect on small scale businesses in Abakaliki metropolis, mobile USSD cashless policy instrument has positive but insignificant effect on Small scale businesses in Abakaliki metropolis, and online web cashless policy instrument have positive but insignificant effect on small scale businesses in Abakaliki metropolis. Following the findings, the researchers recommended that there is need for the small scale business owners to expand their use of POS for business transactions as it seem to have significant positive influence on their business, the business owners should explore more options to make their customers adopt use of USSD transactions so as to offer more convenience and security for both their customers and their businesses, and the agent banking operators may need to intensify effort in collaboration with their parent banks to make online web transactions more appealing to consumers.