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This paper identifies the factors that determine citizens’ acceptance of SMS-based e-government services. It reports on a web-based survey, paper-based questionnaires, and phone-call interviews that collected 159 responses from 25 countries. The results indicate that there are fifteen perceptions toward using SMS-based e-government services that may influence citizens to use or to reject the services:

• perceived ease of use
• perceived efficiency in time and distance
• perceived value for money; perceived usefulness
• perceived responsiveness; perceived convenience
• perceived relevance, quality and reliability of the information
• trust in the SMS technology
• perceived risk to user privacy
• perceived reliability of the mobile network and the SMS-based system
• trust in government and perceived quality of public services
• perceived risk to money
• perceived availability of device and infrastructure
• perceived compatibility; and
• perceived self-efficacy in using SMS.

Whether or not a citizen adopts an SMS-based e-government service is influenced by these perceptions. To increase the acceptance of SMS-based e-government services, the systems should address all of these belief factors. An intensive advertising campaign for the services in all mass media channels is critically important to make citizens aware of and to provide detailed knowledge about the services. The advertising campaign should involve people who influence individuals’ decision making. These people include friends, family, teachers, experts, public figures, and government officials. This study found that Notification services are the most frequently used followed by Pull SMS, Listen, and Transaction SMS services. Notification services could be an appropriate starting point for governments who want to establish SMS-based e-government services.

M‐PESA is a small‐value electronic payment and store of value system that is accessible from ordinary mobile phones. It has seen exceptional growth since its introduction by mobile phone operator Safaricom in Kenya in March 2007: it has already been adopted by 9 million customers (corresponding to 40% of Kenya’s adult population) and processes more transactions domestically than Western Union does globally. M‐PESA’s market success can be interpreted as the interplay of three sets of factors: (i) pre‐existing country conditions that made Kenya a conducive environment for a successful mobile money deployment; (ii) a clever service design that facilitated rapid adoption and early capturing of network effects; and (iii) a business execution strategy that helped M‐PESA rapidly reach a critical mass of customers, thereby avoiding the adverse chicken‐and‐egg (two‐sided market) problems that afflict new payment systems.