Applications of Robot Staff in Hotels

Service robots are being increasingly employed as hotel staff in the hotel industry. This study explored how hotels can better use and implement service robots for their operation. Four hotels using robots as their staff are chosen as examples for investigating what positions the robot staff do and the comments from customers. It was found that the acceptance of robots in delivering transfer services (eg. Carrying luggage, delivering room service, etc.) are higher than when they provide services at the front desk. These results demonstrated that customers have expectations in engaging with heartwarming interaction with staff when they stay in the hotel, which the robot staff are not providing such interaction in current technology. Therefore, it is suggested that the hotels can arrange the robot staff with the position that do not interact with customers in the current stage. The robot staff can assist the human staff in providing service until they can develop a sophisticated system in two-way interaction.

Déterminants de l’Usage du Transfert d’Argent Mobile par les Utilisateurs d’Internet Mobile au Mali

Le présent papier analyse les principaux déterminants de l’utilisation des services de transfert d’argent mobile par les internautes maliens en situation mobile. Les données collectées auprès de 1739 individus utilisateurs d’Internet mobile de l’étude du groupe de recherche en économie solidaire et industrielle (GRESI) ont été utilisées. Après avoir implémenté le modèle Logit qui est un modèle de régression binomiale, les résultats montrent qu’avoir un niveau d’instruction inférieur au niveau secondaire, avoir un âge compris entre 15-35 ans et la cherté du coût de connexion jouent négativement sur la probabilité d’utiliser le mobile money via Internet mobile au Mali. Tandis que le revenu, la zone de résidence urbaine, les compétences en informatiques et les professions : ouvrier, entrepreneur, commerçant et agriculteur influencent positivement l’utilisation des services de transfert d’argent mobile par le truchement d’Internet mobile. This paper analyses the main determinants of the use of mobile money transfer services by Malian Internet users in a mobile situation. Data collected from 1739 individual mobile Internet users of the study by the solidarity and industrial economy research group (GRESI) were used. After having implemented the Logit model which is a binomial regression model, our results show that having an education level below secondary level, having an age between 15-35 years old and the high cost of connection have a negative impact on the probability of using mobile money via mobile Internet in Mali. While income, urban area of residence, computer skills and occupations: worker, entrepreneur, trader and farmer positively influence the use of mobile money transfer services through the mobile internet.

International Remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean amid the COVID-19 Crisis: A Push for Digitalization?

Remittances constitute a significant safety net for millions of households in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Consequently, changes in international transfers can be a crucial agent of transmission of the COVID-19 induced economic crisis from richer to poorer nations and from urban to rural areas. Relying on data on queries to the search engine Google between December 2018 and July 2021, this study looks at the evolution of demand for in-person versus digital international transfer services and evaluates if take-up rates of different types of service providers trace the initial drop and subsequent rebound of remittances. The recovery of remittances was accompanied by a modest and temporary increase in the interest in digital mechanisms for sending money to home countries, which is accompanied by lower demand for brick-and-mortar service providers.

Factors Influencing Rural Households’ Decision-Making Behavior on Residential Relocation: Willingness and Destination

All the traditional models of centralized residence based on “building a new socialist countryside” and “maintaining a balance between the increase and the decrease” are top-down in nature and require farmers to make responses and readjustment to all possible policies and changes. Therefore, it’s important to understand farmers’ preferences and take their willingness and needs into account when designing and implementing the relative planning programs of centralized residence. In this paper, with the numerical value 10 as the criterion of Events Per Variable (EPV) and Variance Inflation Factor (VIF), four different types of binary logistic regression were respectively applied to analyze factors that may influence farmer households’ relocation willingness and relocation destination in the following five aspects: Individual characteristics, household characteristics, housing characteristics, farmland characteristics, and implementation environment of centralized residence. As indicated in the results, people would show more willingness to relocate when they were younger, had higher household income, lived in an older building, possessed a bigger building area, owned farmland with higher quality, or lived in an environment with a higher infrastructure match rate. In addition, household income was a common factor influencing households’ choice between nearby relocation sites (NRS) and urban areas as their relocation destinations. The building area and occupancy rate negatively affected households’ choice of NRS, while building age negatively affected that of urban areas. Based on these influencing factors, some policy suggestions are proposed in this paper in terms of job creation, implementation of zoning and classification strategies, improvement of the quality of land transfer services, and reconstruction of the rural landscapes.

The Impact of Central Bank of Liberia Guidelines on Inbound Money Transfers in Liberia (the Liberian Bank for Development & Investment 2016-2018)

The Central Bank of Liberia (CBL), according to its mandate under the Act of 1999 and its authority, in line with Section 55 and 39, on November 15, 2016, issue a regulation (No. CBL/RSD/004/2016) on payment of Inbound money transfers, which was ordered by former President of the Republic of Liberia, Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The objective of this regulation was to support the effective management of the foreign exchange market. The regulation applies to all licensed financial institutions involved in money transfer services, such as Western Union and MoneyGram. The regulation did not apply to inbound money transfers that are made using recipient accounts at commercial banks. Conclusion: The theoretical framework presented in this research suggests that commercial banks, be precise, the Liberia Bank for Development and Investment (LBDI), are more likely to suffer a decrease in commission on inbound money transfers throughout the three years (3) of restrictions.

The development of electronic payment systems in Ukraine and their security

The paper is devoted to the study of innovations in the market of modern payment systems. The pandemic and quarantine restrictions have accelerated the expansion of the payment infrastructure in Ukraine, which in turn raises the issue of security of electronic payment systems. Ukrainians are more actively switching to electronic payments. At the same time, the trend of growing popularity of contactless payment instruments and settlements with them continues. A comparative analysis of the security of payment systems using electronic technologies in the implementation of money transfer services in Ukraine has been performed. The components of the payment system, information security measures in the electronic payment system have been also considered. The schema of electronic payments and the block diagram of the information protection subsystem of electronic payment system have been constructed. The criteria for assessing the security of the electronic payment system have been determined. A total of fifteen safety criteria have been identified, they are divided into six groups according to the degree of safety. Six electronic system payments were used for the study and the research results have been presented in this paper. The tendencies of development of electronic payment systems in modern conditions and ways of improvement of their activity taking into account the newest information technologies have been outlined.

Virtual currency as an object of financial monitoring: taking into account the experience of foreign countriesin the formation of national legislation

Problem setting. On April 28, 2020, the Law of Ukraine “On Prevention and Counteraction to Legalization (Laundering) of Proceeds from Crime, Financing of Terrorism and Financing of the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction” came into force, which expands the range of state financial monitoring entities a new category of subjects of primary financial monitoring – providers of services, related to the circulation of virtual assets. The space of virtual currencies has expanded to include a number of new products and services, activities and interactions. In turn, the rapid development, growing recognition and global nature of products and services based on virtual currency have increased the risks of using such a financial asset to legalize illicit income. Contributing to this fact that payment products and services based on virtual currency do not recognize borders and transactions with them can be carried out without any apparent link to a particular jurisdiction. Therefore, the financial system of any state can be used to legalize (launder) proceeds of crime. This issue is extremely important for Ukraine, because the state of this problem is at a low level, and the issue of its solution is only being raised. The purpose of the research. Research of the approaches that some countries are currently using, and some are going to apply in the near future, in the field of regulation of payment products and services based on virtual currency as an object of financial monitoring in order to take them into account when developing national legislation in this area. Analysis of resent researches and publications. The problem of virtual currency as a new means of payment, its functionality and types were studied in the works of domestic scientists – M. Kucheryavenko, A. Kud, E. Smychok, A. Ovcharenko, O. Glushchenko, S. Khvalinsky and foreign – Fredrik Schneider, E. Gots. But the author of the article draws attention to a separate aspect of this problem - the legal uncertainty and unregulated implementation of transactions with virtual currency in legal relations in the field of financial monitoring. Article’s main body. Having analyzed the experience of foreign countries in the formation of national legislation, we consider it possible to offer the following recommendations for regulating financial monitoring, where the object is virtual currency: 1) registration in a special body of service providers related to virtual assets, both national and foreign origin; 2) conducting activities by the national financial monitoring service (seminars, lectures, webinars, issue of reports, collections of cases, etc.) on illegal use of crypto-assets, both among the subjects of primary financial monitoring and among individuals and legal entities whose activities are not associated with virtual currency in order to eliminate financial illiteracy; 3) licensing of activities; 4) creation of a separate department in the structure of the financial monitoring service for supervision and control of providers of services in the field of virtual currency, which would evaluate programs, business plans of such providers in order to prevent neutralization of risks in the field of virtual assets, combating money laundering; 5) the obligation directly to the providers of virtual services to periodically provide reports on the risks that exist in their activities; 6) differentiation of services with virtual assets depending on the subject or object of the service itself: services in the field of money transfer, services in the field of securities, services in the field of exchange goods and derivatives and development of typology and risk indicators for each area ; 7) establishing close cooperation between state national authorities on the exchange of any information related to the implementation of activities in the field of virtual currency. Conclusions. The article, based on a study of the approaches used by some countries in the field of regulation of payment products and services based on virtual currency as an object of financial monitoring, provides suggestions for their application in national legislation. The experience of regulatory supervision over the use of virtual currencies in the field of financial monitoring is studied on the example of Italy, USA, Norway, Japan, Sweden, Mexico, Finland and the most effective measures are singled out. The focus is on the cross-border nature of virtual currency transactions as an object of financial monitoring and ways to track them.

The Influence of Digital Financial Services on the Financial Performance of Commercial Banks in Cameroon

A strong banking industry is important in every nation and this can have a significant effect in supporting economic development through the provision of efficient financial services. Digital banking/financial services is the act of carrying out financial transactions without the use of physical cash, coins or bills. This paper sort to determine the influence of digital financial services on the financial performance of commercial banks in Cameroon. Specifically, it examined the influence of Digital Savings Services, Digital Transfers Services, Digital Withdrawals Services and Digital Payment Services on the profitability of commercial banks in Cameroon. It covers 10 out of 15 commercial banks in Cameroon. Methodologically, it made use of survey research design. Item by item analysis of the questions was used to identify the reliability of digital financial services. The Taylor linearise variance estimation technique was used to determine their influence on commercial bank profitability. Results from the study showed that digital saving services, digital withdrawal services and digital transfer services have a positive and significant influence on the profitability of commercial banks in Cameroon. Digital payment on the other hand had a negative but significant influence on commercial Bank’s Profitability at 10% level of significance. Generally, 48% of variations of profitability of commercial banks are caused by joint variations in the use of digital transfer services, Digital Savings services, Digital Withdrawal services and Digital Payment services. Consequently 0.52 or 52% of the variations in profitability are not accounted for by the study’s model on digital financial services and bank profitability but caused by the error term. Conclusively, digital financial services are a booster of commercial bank’s profit levels. Finally, the study recommended that management of banks and policy makers in the banking industry should go in for robust digital systems and services as a means to diversify their sources of income and meet up with declining profit levels.

DETERMINANTS OF SMALLHOLDER FARMERS’ ACCESS TO MOBILE PHONE BASED MONEY TRANSFER SERVICES – EVIDENCE FROM VOLTA REGION OF GHANA

Objective: Smallholder farmers’ access to Mobile Phone Based Money Transfer Services in Akatsi North District of Volta Region of Ghana under the Planting for Food and Jobs Programme. Methods: Primary data were collected from 300 farmers in beneficiary districts while secondary data were gathered from literatures and various actors. A multi-stage sampling technique was used in selecting respondents for the study. The first stage involved selecting ten communities that benefited from the planting for food and jobs program in the Akatsi North district, while the second stage considered randomly selecting 30 beneficiary farmers in each community. Obtained data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences and STATA-11 software. Results were presented in the form of descriptive statistics, cross tabulation, and Logit regression model. Results: Majority of respondents (74%) do not use Mobile Phone Based Money Transfer platform for any agricultural transaction. Is only 26% of the respondents that use the mobile money platform for their agribusiness activities. Out of the nine explanatory variables included in the Logit regression model, six of them were significant at p<0.01, p<0.05, and p<0.1. Significant factors include: Educational level of households, age, major occupation, accessibility of mobile money service provider, convenience to respondent, trust of the system, and availability of mobile money service. Conclusions: The availability and accessibility of Mobile Phone Based Money financial services among smallholder farmers is key to achieving competitive global business.