Digital payment systems have become a cornerstone of consumer finance in Africa. Prominent payment categories include money transfer applications, mobile money, cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). While there are studies exploring how and why people use individual digital payment systems (both in Africa and beyond), we lack a good understanding of why people choose between different categories of payment systems, and how they view the tradeoffs between different categories. We conducted qualitative interviews in three African countries -- Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe -- to understand how and why people use various payment systems, and what influenced them to start using these systems. Our study highlights several notable findings regarding tradeoffs between perceived utility, privacy, and security. For example, many users trust government issuers to protect them from scams, but they do not trust those same institutions to build reliable systems and products or prioritize customer satisfaction. We also find that most users have accounts on multiple payment systems, and conduct a complex selection process using different platforms for different types of payments. This selection process is driven in part by financial considerations, but also by security, privacy, and trust preferences. Our findings suggest compelling directions for regulators and the research community to design systems that balance users' trust and utility needs.

翻译：数字支付系统已成为非洲消费金融的基石。主要支付类别包括汇款应用、移动支付、加密货币、稳定币及央行数字货币。目前已有研究探讨个人在非洲及其他地区使用特定数字支付系统的方式与原因，但人们对用户为何在不同支付类别间进行选择，以及如何看待各类别之间的权衡缺乏深入理解。我们在尼日利亚、坦桑尼亚和津巴布韦三个非洲国家开展定性访谈，以探究用户使用各类支付系统的方式、动机及其采纳影响因素。研究揭示了关于感知效用、隐私与安全性权衡的若干重要发现：例如，多数用户信任政府发行机构能保护其免受欺诈，但又不信任同一机构能构建可靠系统与产品，或优先考虑客户满意度。我们还发现，大多数用户拥有多个支付系统账户，并针对不同支付类型实施复杂的选择流程——这一流程部分受财务因素驱动，但也与安全性、隐私及信任偏好相关。研究结果为监管界与学界设计平衡用户信任与效用需求的系统提供了重要启示。