Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

A prerequisite to carry out transactions using a mobile phone is an effective mobilepayment system. However, no standardised, widely adopted mobile payment systemhas yet emerged, and this is believed to be one of the factors that inhibitswidespread use of mobile commerce. This paper reports on a research project inwhich the factors are examined that affect the introduction success of mobilepayment systems.

We start from the venture point that a lot can be learned from research on internetpaying systems, payment systems that have been introduced to faciliate paymentsmade over the internet. First we transferred factors affecting the introduction ofinternet payment systems to a mobile setting. We then contrasted this list with theviews of 13 executives we interviewed in Sweden and the Netherlands.

We found that while many factors are at play at the same time, a subset of thesestood out at the early stages of the lifecycle of mobile payment systems. In the areaof consumer acceptance, these are their cost and their ease of use relative to otherpayment methods, and the perceived risk. In the area of merchant acceptance,transaction fees compared to debit and credit card systems are important, as is, to asignificant extent, the ease of use for the merchant. Finally, both customer andmerchant acceptance are highly interdependent as each influences the other,especially during the early stages.