Utilization of technological innovations impacts on societal relationships and consequently influence social change and social interaction including the way people communicate, do business and access services (Cascio & Montealegre, 2016). In this era, there has been an increase in the design and implementation of new self-service technologies (SSTs) to produce and enable users to access and utilize services without direct personal contact with utility service providers and or their representatives to improve efficiency and end-user governance and interaction (Iqbal, Hassan & Habibah, 2018).

My PhD research project  which is anchored in the Diffusion of Innovations Theory,  Actor Orientend Theory (AOT) and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), uses a cross sectional design to critically examine prepayment technology as an appropriate approach to accelerate universal water access for the urban poor in a complex city set up in a developing country like Uganda. It is not clear what is contributing to underutilization of prepayment systems in Kampala’s urban poor settings, which yet have a subsidized tariff. Given the huge investment in this technology and the fact that many thousands of people still lack access to safe drinking water in slums, it is necessary to interrogate the initial understanding that prepayment technology offers an effective means for universal access to safe water by the hitherto unserved urban poor.