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ABSTRACT
The growth of mobile commerce depends on widely accepted mobile payment systems. Although new mobile payment systems have been increasingly introduced in Asia, Europe and the United States, their adoption has remained modest. Little research has been conducted to examine and explain adopters' views on the new payment technology. In this article, we explore merchant adoption of mobile payment systems empirically and discuss factors that drive and inhibit their adoption. Our results suggest that the main adoption drivers are related to the means of increasing sales or reducing the costs of payment processing, whereas the barriers to adoption include complexity of the systems, unfavorable revenue sharing models, lack of critical mass, and lack of standardization. Based on our findings, we propose a conceptual framework of adoption enablers, drivers and barriers with propositions to guide future research in this emerging area. Implications for practice and means to overcome the barriers are suggested.
Keywords: mobile payments, mobile commerce, electronic payment systems, technology adoption
INTRODUCTION
The proliferation of mobile communication technologies during the 1990's and the success of the early mobile content services, such as ringtones, logos and games, have introduced a new type of commerce conducted via telecommunication networks: mobile commerce. Mobile commerce is a form of electronic commerce where at least part of the transaction is conducted via a mobile device, most often a mobile telephone (Karnouskos, 2004). An international survey by LogicaCMG (2005) reports that one fifth of mobile phone owners in Europe, North and South America, and Asia Pacific have experience in downloading mobile content to their handsets. The mobile content market has developed into a billion dollar business (Menke and de Lussanet, 2006).
Mobile commerce purchases, such as mobile content, are commonly paid for with mobile payment systems. These systems are developed and provided by telecom operators, financial institutions, handset manufacturers and new startups, or cooperative ventures between different parties. Mobile payments are defined as the use of a mobile device, for example a mobile phone or a PDA, to conduct a payment transaction in which money or funds are transferred from one party (payer) to another (receiver), either directly or via an intermediary. A mobile payment is commonly initiated by sending an SMS (short message service) to a premium...